(AhlulBayt News Agency) - Nigeria is witnessing that ugly metamorphosis in their incumbent president. Muhammadu Buhari is asserting himself, though, as an unreconstructed tyrant. An older version of the military dictator he used to be.
Since his return to power, Buhari has made a duty of going to United Nations General Assembly and openly express support for the independence quests of the peoples of Western Sahara and Palestine, he casts the disaffected Nigerians interrogating the British bequest called Nigeria as rebels craving for war: He calls them malcontents worthy of extermination.
Buhari is serving the leader of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, Ibrahim El-zakzaky in the prison for more than a year.
El-Zakzaky has not denied his preference for a more stringent application of Islamic legal system or indeed the establishment of a theocracy modeled after Iran, but he has insisted “Our weapon is positive reasoning, truth and good conduct. Guns are for the reckless and foolhardy. We have been conducting our affairs peacefully, calling people to the truth for the last 36 years… We save lives, not kill them.”
Since the judiciary has consistently insisted that El-Zakzaky and his Shia group are not a threat to the country’s security, the state has to provide proof to invalidate his thesis that he and his group are victims of religious intolerance that have come to define the once-celebrated ‘one north, one people’ since the assassination of Ahmadu Bello in 1966.
The prominent cleric and his wife were taken into custody on December 14, 2115, after deadly clashes between the supporters of the IMN movement and Nigerian troops. Nearly 350 members of the Shia movement were killed in the clashes. The sheikh was brutally injured and his house was reportedly destroyed by the army in the incident.
The judge said he had given 45 days for authorities to provide new accommodation for the Zakzaky family. The accommodation is to be in the town of Zaria, Kaduna state, where the family were detained, or in other parts of the state or alternatively any other part of northern Nigeria. Kolawole said the State Security Service would pay each of Sheikh Zakzaky and his wife $78,984 in compensation for the violation of their rights by being held in unlawful custody for nearly a year.
Nearly 100 IMN supporters were killed when Nigerian forces fired live rounds and tear gas at mourners during a peaceful march ahead of the Arbaeen mourning rituals, which mark 40 days after the martyrdom anniversary of Imam Hussein (AS), the third Shia Imam. Authorities also destroyed a number of buildings belonging to the IMN. he Nigerian government has stepped up its crackdown on the IMN since the December 2015 deadly incident.
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