By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

The recent verdict of the Nigerian Court absolving the illegally detained Leader of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) of all accusations against him and his subsequent freedom, along with that of his wife, is indeed heartening for all conscientious people throughout the world.
“Let (Sheikh Ibraheem) Zakzaky go” were the words of Justice Gideon Kurada of the High Court last Wednesday when he upheld the no-case submission of the IMN Leader on the charges levelled against them by the Kaduna State government.
It meant rejection of the 8-count charges leveled against the IMN Leader in May 2018, two-and-a-half years after his abduction and detention by the regime of former military dictator and current President Mohamadu Buhari that included culpable homicide, unlawful assembly, and disruption of public peace.
Nigeria’s steadily growing 14-million plus Shi’a Muslim community welcomed the move as IMN members drove the venerable Sheikh and his wife Zeenah to their home after almost six years in prison on trumped up charges.
This was indeed a victory for the Nigerian people and a setback to their enemies that also include the heretical Wahhabi regime of Riyadh, the illegitimate Zionist entity, the US and the Boko Haram takfiri terrorists.
From the Islamic Republic of Iran which had not spared any diplomatic efforts for his release, Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Ahl al-Bayt World Assembly, Ayatollah Mohammad Hassan Akhtari, promptly sent a congratulatory cable to Sheikh Zakzaky, part of which read:
“With resistance and patience, you managed to pass six years of highly terrible conditions. This happy event, coinciding with the anniversary of the great event of Ghadir, the Eid of Imamate and Wilayah (of Imam Ali [AS]), added to the joy of us and the followers of the Prophet Muhammad’s (SAWA) Ahl al-Bayt (Blessed Household) throughout the world.”
It should be noted that during his long ordeal and bouts of persecution with the regime, the IMN Leader has sacrificed six of his beloved children in defence of Islam, the Holy Qur’an, and humanitarian values.
It remains to be seen whether former military dictator and current president, Mohamadu Buhari, who had first imprisoned Sheikh Zakzaky in 1984 during his coup d’état rule, and now during the present 6-year detention unconstitutionally ignored the verdict passed by Justice Gabriel Kolawole of the Federal High Court in Abuja on 2nd December, 2016, for the IMN Leader’s release, will end his personal enmity.
It is also time for Africa’s most populated country with a population of over a hundred million Muslims to stop dancing to the tunes of the Saudis and the Israelis and the persecution of Nigeria’s 14-million followers of the jurisprudential school of the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt.
The Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), founded about four decades ago and inspired by the Islamic Revolution in Iran, has been unjustly labeled a terrorist threat because of Buhari’s connections to Riyadh and Tel Aviv, although Nigeria’s Shi’a Muslims are peaceful and law-abiding citizens.
As analysts point out, Shi’a Muslims, theologically and ideologically, have no connection to violence and terrorism. Unlike the Boko Haram terrorists, they believe in modern education. Moreover, the regime should know that killing Shi’a Muslims and threatening them with death and destruction will not scare them into submission, because martyrdom is at the core of their ideology.
Sheikh Zakzaky should now press for compensation from those who had imprisoned him unjustly following the Nigerian military’s unprovoked attack and killing of over a thousand people in the city of Zaria, besides desecration and destruction of Hussainiyah Baqiatollah, on 15 December 2015.