Amnesty International has published a scathing report on the killings of members of the Shiite minority sect in Kaduna State, Nigeria, they accused the military of cover up. Amnesty frontally accused the military of killing hundreds of men, women and children last December.
But Colonel Sani Usman, the military spokesman, has dismissed the report as hasty, one-sided and biased.
The Amnesty report has to do with events in Zaria when members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria blocked the road to be taken by the Chief of army staff, Lt. General Tukur Buratai.
In the altercations that followed, the military claimed the Shiites wanted to assassinate the chief of army staff. Over 10 people were killed on 12 December, when this incident happened.
The following day the army said it had raided several buildings connected to the sect.
Amnesty said more than 350 people were believed to have been unlawfully killed by the military between December 12 and 14. Its report contains satellite images that it said appeared to show the location of a mass grave.
According to a witness, Yusuf, soldiers set fire to a makeshift medical facility in the sect’s compound. “Those who were badly injured and could not escape were burned alive,” he said, adding that he believed tens of people died in this way.
In the words of Netsanet Belay, an Amnesty director, “It is clear that the military not only used unlawful and excessive force against men, women and children, unlawfully killing hundreds, but then made considerable efforts to try to cover-up these crimes.”
Amnesty claimed it conducted the research in February 2016 during which 92 people were interviewed, including alleged victims and their relatives, eyewitnesses, lawyers and medical staff.
“It is clear that the military not only used unlawful and excessive force against men, women and children, unlawfully killing hundreds, but then made considerable efforts to try to cover-up these crimes,” added Netsanet Belay.
“Our research, based on witness testimonies and analysis of satellite images, has located one possible mass grave,” he said.
Majority of the Muslims in Nigeria are of the Sunni sect, including violent Boko Haram militants who have killed thousands in bombings and shootings, mainly in the northeast, since 2009.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with about 180 million people, includes several thousand Shi’ite Muslims whose movement is said to be connected to the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Shi’ite Iran.
