Tobi Adebayo
The leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), Sheikh Ibraheem El-Zakzaky and his wife, Zeenat Ibrahim have been acquitted and discharged by a Kaduna High Court on Wednesday.
The couple were arrested and detained since 2015, after IMN supporters clashed with soldiers in Zaria, Kaduna.
El-Zakzaky and his wife have been standing trial in the court on eight counts bordering on alleged culpable homicide, unlawful assembly, disruption of the public peace, among others.
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Delivering the judgement, Justice Gideon Kurada said the case was not shown nor proven by the prosecutor.
The couple, who have been standing trial for four years, had pleaded not guilty to the charges preferred against them.
The United States had also classified them as political prisoners in a 2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices issued by its State Department in April 2021.
“Political prisoners and detainees. IMN’s leader, Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky, and his spouse remained in detention. In 2018 the Kaduna State Government charged Zakzaky in state court with multiple felonies stemming from the death of a soldier at Zaria,” the report read in part.
