NIGERIA : Army opens fire on Sheikh Zakzaky supporters
Two people have been martyred after Nigerian police used live
ammunition to disperse protesters demanding the release of Sheikh Ibrahim
Zakzaky in the country’s state of Abuja.
The
protest rally was being held on Monday against Sheikh Zakzaky's arrest and
trial. Those attending the protests called for the immediate and unconditional
release of Zakzaky, who is the leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN),
presstv reported.
Peaceful protests broke out
yesterday in response to the revelation that Mallimah Zeenah had contracted
Covid-19 whilst in police custody. They continued into today as the Kaduna
State Court adjourned the trial of the couple until March.
The
London-based Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) entered the plea with
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday, reminding the illegal grounds
on which the duo were being kept.
“Mallimah
Zeenah tested positive for COVID-19 this week in Kaduna state prison,” the body
said, referring respectively to Sheikh Ibrahim al-Zakzaky’s spouse and the
facility in the Northwestern city of Kaduna, where they were incarcerated. The
release, it added, was necessary “to protect them from the spread of COVID-19
in the country’s jails”.
In 2016 the federal high court, the highest court in the
country, ruled that the pair’s detention was unlawful and unconstitutional and
ordered the Nigerian government to release them by January 16, 2017 and pay
compensation. However, that ruling has never been enforced. Instead,
perversely, state authorities in Kaduna decided to prosecute the pair in 2018.
Their continued detention with repeated court adjournments even
in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic ripping through the country’s prisons
forms part of a process of ongoing maltreatment. It reinforces the view that
Nigerian authorities are abusing the judicial system to keep the couple jailed
in the hope that they will die quietly in custody.
The violence imposed out against the supporters of the Islamic
Movement now, as it was back in 2015, is part of the same process of trying to
force the movement out of existence.
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