Shi’ites Petition Icc Over El-zakzaky’s Continued Detention
SAN FRANCISCO, March 22, (THEWILL) – The Islamic Movement In Nigeria, IMN, otherwise known as Shia sect has forwarded a petition to the International Criminal Court, ICC, in The Hague over the continued detention of its leader, Sheik Ibrahim El-Zakzaky by the Department of State Services, DSS.
This was disclosed in a news conference in Kaduna on Monday by the spokesman of the movement, Ibrahim Musa, who added that the petition also sought the intervention of the ICC in the release of its members currently held in various detention facilities across Nigeria.
The sect condemned the detention of El-Zakzaky 100 days after he was arrested by soldiers during the December 12, 2015, violent clash between members of the sect and soldiers in Zaria, Kaduna state.
They argued that the Nigerian government had declared an open war on the movement and its leadership with the intent to exterminate them following the continued detention of their leader and other members.
According to them, the unlawful detention of hundreds of members of the IMNat the Kaduna Central Prison and several other undisclosed detention centres across the country showed that they would not get justice from the Commission of Inquiry set up by the Kaduna State government to investigate the incident.
The Shiites further explained that they had completely lost confidence in the Kaduna Judicial Commission of Inquiry in view of its inability to enforce their orders to the security forces to allow them access to Shiekh Zakzaky.
They also claimed that since the attack, the movement and its leadership have been further subjected to targeted, unwarranted and vicious attack by the Kaduna State government, the military, the police and some hired and hack writers engaged by some faceless individuals to attack the leadership and its members.
Musa maintained that all efforts made by the sect's legal team led by Mr Femi Falana and Mr Festus Okoye to see El-Zakzaky in detention at the DSS facility in Abuja for the purposes of submitting memorandum to the Judicial Commission of Inquiry had been fruitless.