Although the Nigerian government, through the information minister Lai Mohammed had frowned at the U.S’s action, the Shi’ites spokesman, Ibrahim Musa, in a statement on Monday, said officials of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration must be held responsible for allegedly engaging in extra-judicial killings.
“If anyone deserves to be held and tried for crimes, it would be the top officials of the Buhari government who killed over a thousand unarmed citizens extrajudicially and buried them in mass graves, and have used all the might of governance to hide the truth and obstruct the course of justice,” he noted.
Mr Musa said the persecution of IMN members by the current regime was known to the international community, adding that it was a subject of a preliminary investigation by the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
“Furthermore, many local and international human rights organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Islamic Human Rights Commission have all investigated and documented the atrocities meted on members of the Islamic Movement and its leadership, purely based on their religious beliefs.
“That the ongoing persecution of the Islamic Movement has drawn the attention of the world, especially very lately, the United States government is a reality that no forms of lies by Mr Lai (Mohammed) can obliterate.”
According to the IMN, the world was not deceived by the false charges levied against Mr El-Zakzaky.
The statement read, “We, the members of the Islamic Movement and our leader, Sheikh Zakzaky are entitled to freedom of religion, association and expression like every Nigerian citizen, all of which the Buhari regime is denying us and perpetually persecuting us because of our faith and beliefs. Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky is, undoubtedly, a prisoner of faith.”
The movement admonished the government to respect the rule of law and release El-Zakzaky while calling on the public “not to relent in their efforts at denouncing the tyrannical trends of the Buhari regime.”
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