ALLEGED KILLING OF 347SHI'ITES MUSLIMS: AMNESTY CALLS FOR PROBE OF NIGERIAN ARMY

Shi’ites drag Nigerian army to International Criminal Court

Amnesty International says the Nigerian military should be investigated after claims by a Kaduna state official that the army secretly buried 347 people after clashing with members of the Shi’ite Muslim sect.

 
The group also said anyone suspected of wrongdoing must be put on trial.

The Kaduna State Government had told an inquiry that more than 347 persons killed during last year’s clash between the Nigerian Army and Shiite muslims were taken from an army depot and buried in mass graves.

According to TV360, Secretary to the State Government, Balarabe Lawal, disclosed this in a government submission at the ongoing Public Hearing of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into the clash.

Lawal, who led a six-man government witness before the panel, said 191 corpses were taken from the Nigerian Army Depot, Zaria, and were buried at Mando area of Kaduna.

While 156 corpses were also conveyed from the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, Zaria, to the same Mando area.

The army has previously said the Islamic Movement in Nigeria had tried to assassinate its chief of staff, Lieutenant General Tukur Buratai, when members of the sect blocked his convoy in the northern city of Zaria in December. The following day the army said it had raided several buildings connected to the sect.

Lawal did not say whether relatives of the victims were given opportunity to identify and recover their loved ones before the state labelled them unknown corpses and buried them in a mass grave.

Another witness and Director-General, Kaduna State Interfaith Agency, Namadi Musa, said the mass burial was conducted on December 14 and 15, respectively, and that it took the officials about six hours to complete the burial.

Musa said while six tonnes of Mercedes tippers conveyed the 191 corpses from the ABUTH, the Army used three heavy duty trucks to convey corpses from the Zaria Army Depot.

“The mass burial was authorised through a warrant of burial obtained from a Kaduna Chief Magistrates’ Court in Kaduna,’’ he said.

In January, the army chief of staff told the inquiry that his soldiers had acted appropriately in the raid.

Amnesty International Nigeria said the “revelation by the Kaduna State government that hundreds of Shi’ites were gunned down and dumped in mass graves is an important first step to bringing all those suspected of criminal responsibility for this atrocity to trial”.

“It is now imperative that the mass grave sites are protected in order that a full independent forensic investigation can begin,” it said in a statement.

The Shi’ite sect has previously said up to 1,000 of its members had been killed. The inquiry has the power to impose fines and payment of compensation.

Most of the tens of millions of Muslims in Nigeria are Sunni, including Boko Haram militants who have killed thousands in bombings and shootings, mainly in the northeast, since 2009.

Africa’s most populous nation has around 180 million people, including several thousand Shi’ite Muslims whose movement was inspired by the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Shi’ite Iran.

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