OFFICIAL PRESS STATEMENT OF ISLAMIC MOVEMENT
OUR CONDITIONS FOR APPEARING BEFORE THE JUDICIAL COMMISSION OF INQUIRY BY THE KADUNA STATE GOVERNMENT
The
Kaduna State Government has finally established the Judicial Commission
of Inquiry it promised to establish. While the Islamic Movement in
Nigeria (IMN) has called for the setting up of an impartial and
independent Judicial Commission of Inquiry made up of independent
persons and members of the international human rights community to
unravel the circumstances that led to the pogrom in Zaria and its
environs, it believes that the events of December 12, 2015 that led to
the massacre of its members, the maiming of hundreds, the detention of
its cadres and destruction of its properties are premeditated and that
the Federal and Kaduna State Government are in a face saving measure
regarding the gross human rights violations that it deliberately
perpetrated.
The Movement believes in the
justness of its cause and the fact that the events that led to the
setting up of the Judicial Commission is premeditated and will appear
before the Judicial Commission of Inquiry only on the following
conditions:
That the leader of the Islamic
Movement in Nigeria should be released unconditionally. The Nigerian
Government is holding the leader of the Movement incommunicado knowing
that he is the custodian of the documents of the Movement and has to
give direction to the Movement in the preparation of its Memorandum and
the assembling of its witnesses.
The Nigerian
Military and the Nigerian Police must make a full disclosure of the
number of persons in their various detention centers and grant lawyers
of the Movement access to most of them. This is because the Movement has
credible evidence that a large number of its members are still in
detention in military facilities and detention centers.
The
Nigerian Military and the Nigerian Police must also make full
disclosure of the number of persons they took to the various hospitals
and the location of the hospitals to enable the Lawyers of the Movement
have access to them and interview them preparatory to the inauguration
of the Commission.
The Commission of Inquiry
must also give full assurance that the members of the Movement that will
give evidence will be fully protected.
The
Kaduna State Government and the Kaduna State Police Command must
disclose the number of persons it has charged to court and the number of
persons it has in prison custody. This is necessary as the Kaduna State
Police Command and the Kaduna State Government illegally and in a
secret procedure granted detention orders against members of the
Movement and herded them to the Kaduna Central Prison without taking any
of them before any Magistrate Court. Presently, over 200 members of the
Movement are in custody at the Kaduna Central Prison.
The
IMN has a list of 730 missing persons that are either killed by the
Army or are still in military detention facilities for which the Army is
claiming that there is no single member of the Movement with them.
Those in military detention facilities should be released and corpses of
those killed be handed over to us for befitting Islamic burials.
There
are some members of the panel that are clearly neither impartial nor
credible having shown open hostility to the movement and its leadership
through their utterances, writings or actions in the past. Some had even
called the government to go for the jugular of the Islamic Movement in
the past. The IMN does not see any possibility of fairness and justice
from them due to their stance on the Movement and Shia.
Definitely
in their position of arch-enmity with the Movement compromises any
fairness from them in this matter. Independent human rights bodies
should be included in the commission.
These
conditions that have been stated need to be fulfilled by the state
government to convince the IMN that the state government, which is also
an accomplice in the crime, since it demolished our properties and
deliberately wiped out practical evidences of the army’s brutality on
the movement, is not setting up the enquiry to justify the indictment of
the Movement by both the federal and state governments.
SIGNED BY
IBRAHIM MUSA
PRESIDENT MEDIA FORUM OF THE ISLAMIC MOVEMENT
0805 078 6093
17/01/16
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