The Islamic Movement of Nigeria, IMN, said it has rejected the move
by the Federal Government to label it a terrorist or violent
organisation.
The group in a press statement made available to the News Agency of
Nigeria said it has always been a peaceful organization and remains
committed to peace, despite the incarceration of its leader, Sheikh
Ibraheem El-Zakzaky.
The group said it suspected that the attempt to label it a, “violent
and terrorist” is designed to “finally nail the coffin on it once and
for all.”
“By this evil design, the free Zakzaky campaign now gaining momentum
and indeed the Movement, will be done away with finality. This is a
multi-faceted scheme with involvement of agents at various levels and
layers,” the IMN spokesman Ibrahim Musa said.
“Recently, the Federal Attorney General, Mr. Abubakar Malami SAN,
gave an indication that proved that some sinister motives were behind
their refusal to obey court judgement, when he hid under the cover of
what he termed “public interest” as against the tag of “protective
custody” they initially used.
“The bait here is to initiate some very alarming disruption of public
peace in the name of the Islamic Movement in order to reach their
goals. This evil design of disruption of peace in our name is plotted to
be of a magnitude and proportions as to sufficiently frighten the
public and want them want to avoid us like a plague. This will swing public opinion against us and want to go for our jugular, especially the law courts.
“The plots by the security forces have thickened to carry out series
of attacks of such a large scale and proportions that will be
subsequently attributed to the Movement, starting from the course of our
peaceful activities using their agents within. In that way, they hope
to associate the peaceful campaigns to free Sheikh Zakzaky with
violence, and from there, the security forces will take it from there
and escalate it to the scale and scope they desire.
This two-faced
machination of the Security to pretend they are working to enforce peace
and security while in fact they mean evil is very much known to us.
“We want to unequivocally state for the umpteenth times that the use
of violence is never in our character. Our leader, Sheikh Zakzaky has
categorically said times without numbers that we are out to save lives
and not to destroy them. He said anytime you here a shot and it is said
to be coming from our direction, you should know that it is fake news as
we do not use weapons or violent tactics to achieve our goals.
“This has been clearly demonstrated in the present Free Zakzaky
campaigns since the brutal massacre of over a thousand of our innocent
members and the illegal detention of our leader and hundreds of his
followers for the past two years. For sometimes now we have been staging
peaceful protest marches and sit-outs in Abuja to press home our demand
for the freedom of our revered Leader Sheikh Zakzaky, his wife and
several others in detention since the Zaria massacre of December 2015.
“We have not for once resorted to the use of terror tactics. This is not about to change.”