Nigeria’s main Shiite group says it has no links with Boko Haram and is
not planning a coalition with the militant group.
The Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) clashed with
the Nigerian Army in Zaria, Kaduna state in northern Nigeria in December 2015 after the army
claimed IMN members attempted to assassinate the Chief of Army Staff. Some 300 IMN
members were killed in
the clashes, according to a report by Human Rights Watch, while the group’s
spiritual leader Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky was arrested and remains in detention.
The movement released a
statement on
Monday, claiming that reports were circulating among the Nigerian security
services, linking the IMN with the
Sunni fundamentalist group Boko Haram, which has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions
during its six-year insurgency in Nigeria.
Ibrahim Musa, the IMN’s media spokesperson, told Newsweek that
the reports had been circulated by Nigeria’s intelligence agency, the State
Security Service (DSS), to give justification for a crackdown on the movement.
“The Islamic Movement is totally and completely different from the so-called
Boko Haram. Sheikh Zakzaky has said it many times that we only talk but we
don’t fight,” says Musa.
Newsweek attempted to
contact the DSS for comment but no one was immediately available.
Boko Haram, which considers Shiite Muslims to be infidels, has
previously attacked IMN gatherings, Musa says. He blames the group, led by the
elusive Abubakar Shekau, for a suicide
bombing at a religious
procession in Potiskum, Yobe state, which killed at least 20 people in November
2014.
In 2015, a male suicide bomber detonated his device during a Shiite
pilgrimage from Kano to Zaria, killing at least 21 people. Boko Haram released
a statement claiming responsibility for the attacks, saying they would continue
to fight “against Shia polytheists...until we cleanse the earth of their
filth.” Sheikh Zakzaky, however, denied that
the group was responsible and suggested the Nigerian military may have been behind the attack.
According to Musa, this is because Zakzaky and the IMN see Boko Haram as a tool
used by the military to persecute their group.
“If a group with such a venomous agenda against us can do this to us,
then how can we go into strategic alliance with it? It’s impossible,” says
Musa.
Zakzaky has been in detention since December 2015 and the IMN has
claimed that a further 700
of their members are still missing as a result of the clashes with the army. A Kaduna
state government inquiry into the events has been criticized by the IMN as
biased and Musa says the group is still campaigning for the unconditional
release of its leader.
In a previous comment to Newsweek , Nigerian defense
spokesman Brigadier General Rabe Abubakar said that it would be inappropriate
to comment on Zakzaky’s detention but that the army had created a new human
rights investigatory committee to investigate alleged abuses, such as the Zaria
clashes, and that the military had “nothing to hide.”
Comments
Post a Comment