Amnesty International on Wednesday called for immediate investigation into the killing and secret burial of Shiites by the Nigerian Army and the Kaduna State Government.
This follows revelations of the killing and secret burial of over 340 members of the Shiite group sect in the army massacre of worshippers in Zaria during the sitting of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into the Zaria massacre in Kaduna.
Amnesty through a press statement called for the trial of anyone suspected of criminal responsibility. “Revelations of the slaughter and secret burial of 347 members of a Shi’ite religious group in mass graves by the Nigerian army must be urgently investigated”
“The horrific 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,” said Country Director of Amnesty International Nigeria, M.K. Ibrahim.
“It is now imperative that the mass grave sites are protected in order that a full independent forensic investigation can begin. The bodies must be exhumed and Nigerian authorities should immediately reveal the whereabouts of those held in unacknowledged detention and either charge or release them,” he added
Recall that the Kaduna state government had owned up to the killing and secret burial of about 347 Shiite members who were killed during their clash with the army on December 12 last year in Kaduna.
The Secretary to the Kaduna State Government (SSG), Balarabe Lawal, made the shocking revelation in a government submission at the ongoing Public Hearing of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into the clash.
He disclosed that the burial of the victims was done in secret. This was the first official government position on the burial of the Shiites since the clash last year.
According to Lawal, who led a six-man government witnesses before the panel, said 191 corpses were taken from the Nigerian Army Depot, Zaria, and were buried at Mando area of Kaduna.
He said 156 corpses were also conveyed from the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABUTH), Zaria, to the same Mando area. Adding that the corpses were those of youth members of the Islam Movement (IMN) who he alleged attempted to attack the convoy of the Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai, on Dec. 12, 2015, in Zaria.
The state government said the corpses were committed into a single grave (mass burial) at the Mando area jointly supervised by the state government officials and about 40 men of the Nigerian Army, led by an officer in the rank of a Major.
However, Lawal did not disclose 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.
The post How were 350 Shiites killed and buried secretly? Amnesty Intl calls for trials appeared first on The Whistle.
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