PRESS RELEASE

IHRC has received credible information from sources on the ground in Nigeria that authorities are seeking to destroy evidence and witnesses relating to government atrocities committed against supporters of the country’s Islamic Movement.

The intelligence suggests that individuals including eye-witnesses may be at risk of being targeted as the authorities seek to dispose of anything that might connect them to crimes that are currently the subject of a preliminary investigation by the International Criminal Court, foremost of which is the Zaria massacre of 2015.

IHRC has ICC to expedite its processes in order to guard against the possibility of vital evidence and witnesses being eliminated.

This is not the first time Nigerian authorities have been accused of planning to destroy evidence.

In December 2017 IHRC was forced to write to the International Criminal Court urging it to take immediate action to prevent the possible relocation of bodies buried in mass graves following the Zaria massacre.

Our move followed reports from the ground that the armed forces were preparing to exhume approximately 1000 bodies in a bid to destroy evidence relating to the massacre.

IHRC petitioned the International Criminal Court in March 2016 to open an investigation into the massacre in which thousands of civilians were brutally shot, hacked, burnt or beaten to death by soldiers in a pre-planned attack against the Islamic Movement, a popular opposition movement headed by Sheikh Ibrahim el-Zakzaky

For more information or comment please contact the Press Office on (+44) 20 8904 4222 or (+44) 7958522196[ENDS]

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IHRC is an NGO in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.

Islamic Human Rights Commission
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