An Islamic group has bemoaned the continued maltreatment and seizure of the passport of the leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky, and his wife seven months after they were acquitted and discharged by the court.
The federal government in July 2019 proscribed the IMN as a terrorist organisation.
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The group under the aegis of Concerned Abuja Indigenes, at a press briefing Friday, demanded the immediate release of their travelling documents to enable the couple embark on medical treatment overseas.
The concerned indigenes said the gunshot injuries sustained by the cleric and his wife had affected their eye sights and that parts of their body still had shrapnel from the Nigerian Army’s attack on their Islamic centre in Zaria on December 12, 2015, which left “the house to piles of rubble and ashes, killed three of his children, with the Sheikh and his wife wounded.”
In the statement signed by Ayedo Danjuma Abdul, the group said the gesture would dissuade his sympathisers from embarking on fresh street protests in Abuja.
He said, “We urge the federal government to release Sheikh El-Zakzaky’s passport along with his wife’s to enable them travel to the hospital of their choice to avoid the return to the street protests by his supporters which turned Abuja from the city it used to be to a seemingly battleground.
“As a result of the police brutality against the free El-Zakzaky protesters, many businesses were disrupted, and lives lost on numerous occasions, including two journalists, a police officer, many protesters, and even some of our members.”
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