Leader of the banned Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, has debunked the claims that he sought for asylum in India.
In a statement, IMN also accused the federal government of “a campaign of calumny” against its leader, adding the allegation was made by the government “to cover its own gross misconduct in a foreign land.”
Apparently responding to the issue that led to the El-Zakzaky’s repatriation in a statement made available to LEADERSHIP in Abuja yesterday, the president, Media Forum of the IMN, Ibrahim Musa, alleged that the federal government went beyond its role of supervision to interfering in the medical process, dictating which doctors the Sheikh and his wife must see, while refusing to allow them to access their own doctors at Medenta Hospital, New Delhi.
This, he said, confirmed the allegation that “the government had wanted to kill the Sheikh in the name of medical treatment.”
Musa further said that before efforts at resolving the impasse could be concluded, the Sheikh was brought back to Nigeria, “since their evil schemes could not be executed.”
The IMN said El-Zakzaky refused to be subjected to any breach in the basic ethical principles guiding the medical treatment, including respect for persons, protecting the autonomy of all people and treating them with courtesy and respect and allowing for informed consent, which it alleged the FG had contracted medical personnel in the hospital to breach.
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The statement reads in part: “Before efforts at resolving this impasse could be concluded, the Sheikh was brought back to Nigeria, since their evil schemes could not be executed. The government is now churning out contradictory explanations to blame the Sheikh for not allowing himself to be killed in the name of medical treatment. The Nigerian government is also blackmailing the Sheikh that he sought for asylum in India just to cover their own gross misconduct in a foreign land
The statement reads in part: “Being mindful of the government’s various previous plots to eliminate him since 2015, first through the barrels of the gun and much later through poisoning in detention while refusing him access to adequate medical care until the court’s intervention, the Sheikh sensed the government’s intention of inducing killer doctors to finish what they had earlier started, now through the back door.
“He, therefore, insisted on having the presence of the doctors that initially assessed him in Nigeria, who also worked in that hospital, failing which, he preferred to return to Nigeria.”
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He further argued that the Shi’ite leader would not have elected to return home if he had plans to seek asylum, saying, “It is on record that it was the Sheikh who requested to be brought back home, having been denied access to his doctors and rejecting the killer squad engaged to treat him instead.”
He added that all the “allegations against this couple have always been merely spurious and unproven, and knowing that they could never prove in any court use the might of state power to intimidate and misinform the public.”
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