Kaduna State High Court yesterday ordered the Department of State Services (DSS) to transfer the leader of Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, and his wife, Zeenat, to the Nigerian Correctional Centre, Kaduna. Kaduna State government is prosecuting the IMN leader and his wife for culpable homicide, unlawful assembly and disruption of public peace, among other charges.
The trial judge, Justice Gideon Kudafa, ruled yesterday that the decision to remand the IMN leader and his wife in the correctional facility was to enable their lawyers and doctors have easy access to them. El-Zakzaky and his wife had been in DSS custody.
Justice Gideon Kudafa’s order was sequel to the application by counsel to the IMN leader, Haruna Magashi, at the resumed hearing of the main suit in Kaduna, eight months after the last hearing in April. Kudafa had on April 25 adjourned the trial of the IMN leader indefinitely to enable him serve on the panel of the Presidential and National Assembly Elections Petitions Tribunal in Yobe.
At the resumed hearing of the case yesterday, Magashi, who held the brief for Femi Falana (SAN), the lead counsel to the IMN leader and his wife, applied for his clients’ transfer to the Kaduna prisons, now known as Correctional Centre. He told newsmen shortly after the case was adjourned till February 6, 2020, for hearing, that the team of counsel to the IMN leader had always had difficulty seeing him at the DSS detention facility.
The counsel will have easy access to the IMN leader and his wife if transferred to the correctional facility in Kaduna and that will speed up the trial, he added. The order equally took the team of prosecution by storm, when the prosecution counsel led by Dari Bayero appeared in court set to continue with the trial of the IMN leader and his wife.Bayero, also Director of Prosecution at the Kaduna State Ministry of Justice, told newsmen that his team was ready for the trial, but that it was stalled. He, however, said the team would appear set for the trial on the adjourned date.
