Nigerian Muslims Pile Pressure on Government to Release Sheikh Zakzaky

Rasa - The Islamic Movement in Nigeria, IMN, called again on the government to release the movement’s leader, Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky and his wife, Zeenat Ibrahim.

News ID: 429191

Date: 24 April 2017 - 23:41

RNA - INM’s spokesperson Ibrahim Musa said in a statement that the case of Sheikh Zakzaky and his wife is the worst incidents of human rights violation, with respect to the right of personal liberty since the colonial regime in the West African state, Al Waght reported.

He pointed out that it is the height of impunity that has ever been committed by a democratic government in Nigeria to detain without court order and without charges for fifteen months.

“It is even worse when a court has ordered the release of such a person, and the government contemptuously holds him”, he added.

The senior official of Nigeria’s Islamic movement reiterated the movement’s call for the immediate release, Sheikh Zakzaky and his wife as ordered by the Federal High Court, Abuja.

He also demanded the immediate release of hundreds of IMN members languishing in Kaduna Prison and many detention centers across the country.

Musa’s statement was in response to a video clip posted on the official tweeter handle of the Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, was seen defending the federal government’s refusal to comply with a Federal High Court’s judgment that ordered the release of Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky and his wife from illegal detention. He attributed the failure to comply with that landmark judgment to a purported appeal against the judgment by the federal government.

Sheikh Zakzaky and his wife have been detained by Nigerian security agencies since a deadly military assault against the Islamic Movement of Nigeria in December 2015.

During that attack in Zaria over 1,000 civilians were killed in a brutal crackdown by Nigerian troops. As the massacre was going on Sheikh Zakzaky was badly assaulted by government troops and lost the use of an arm and one of his eyes.

He was thereafter abducted by security forces and has been in the illegal custody of Nigeria's domestic intelligence agency (DSS). Reports from family members now indicate that he is in real danger of losing sight in his other eye as he languishes in detention.

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