Sheikh Ibraheem Yaqoub Zakzaky, leader of Nigeria’s Shiite Islamic Movement, and his wife, Zeenah Ibraheem, are still nursing gunshot wounds even as they remain in police custody weeks after their arrest by the army, a spokesman for the group said. The couple was arrested and taken into detention following the December 12, 2015 clash between the Shiites and soldiers, who accused the former of attempting to assassinate Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Tukur Buratai, in their Zaria stronghold in Kaduna State.

In a statement he issued yesterday in Zaria, Ibrahim Musa, President, Media Forum Islamic Movement of Nigeria, also said that about 730 people, men and women who are members of the sect, are still missing.

Musa stated: “On Wednesday 13th January, 2016 some members of the contact committee set up by the National Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) visited Sheikh Ibraheem Yaqoub Zakzaky,” and “according to a member of the committee, Prof. Dahiru Yahya, they met the Sheikh and his wife Sister Zeenah Ibraheem in Abuja, who are all recuperating from the bullet wounds they sustained during the army’s attack on the Islamic Movement in Zaria.”

The Islamic Movement is demanding the unconditional release of Sheikh Zakzaky, “Because up till now the government has not been able to justify the unjustifiable atrocities committed by the army that led to his arrest.”

The group, equally, revealed that it has been “able to establish some figures that indicate how gruesome the avoidable attack by the Nigerian army has been.”

According to findings, Musa said, “about 730 people, men and women are still missing, since that fateful Saturday 12th December, 2015. These missing people were either killed by the army or are in detention, but whose where about is still unknown and undisclosed.”

Musa explained further that, 220 brothers of the Islamic movement in detention in Kaduna Central prison, some of them with fatal gun wounds and burns and “reliable reports from some detention facilities owned by the Nigerian army in Kaduna, Bauchi and Abuja have confirmed the detention of some brothers of the Islamic movement therein.”

The group added that “no single corpse has been handed to the families of those killed.”

While commending the NSCIA for its effort to resolve the crisis, the group demanded for “an independent judicial commission under the watchful eyes of the international community be set up to unearth the truth in the matter and the perpetrators of the Zaria 12th -14th pogrom(massacre) be brought to book.”

•Photo shows Sheikh Zakzaky bloodied after his arrest by soldiers.

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