A Kaduna High Court on Wednesday discharged and acquitted the leader of the Shiite group, Islamic Movement in Nigeria, Ibrahim El-Zakzaky and his wife.
El-Zakzaky was injured and arrested along with his wife, in the 2015 Zaria massacre, in which three of his remaining sons, as well as hundreds of his followers, following a clash with the Nigerian Army.
Since then, he has remained under state detention in Abuja pending his release, which was ordered in late 2016.
In 2019, a court in Kaduna state granted him and his wife bail to seek treatment abroad but they returned from India after three days on the premises of unfair treatment and tough restrictions by security operatives deployed to the medical facility.
During the last sitting on May 25, the prosecuting counsel Dari Bayero finally rested his case by presenting his last witness, thereby bringing the total number of witnesses called by the prosecution to 15.
Among the witnesses who testified against the IMN leader were two Army officers, a retired director of State Security Service (SSS), police officers and a medical doctor.
Also at the hearing, counsel to the defendants, Femi Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, filed a no-case submission and asked the court to dismiss the charges levelled against them as there was no criminal case so far that has been established against the defendants by the Kaduna State government.
This was however opposed by the prosecuting counsel, Daris Bayero who insisted that the defendants have a case to answer, and therefore asked the court to overrule the no-case submission and convict the defendants as provided in the law.
More to follow…
