ICC must prosecute Nigeria massacre culprits: Activist

Press TV has interviewed Raza Kazim, a member of the Islamic Human Rights Commission in London, about Amnesty International saying the Nigerian army deliberately massacred hundreds of supporters of a leading Shia leader last December and dumped their corpses in mass graves to cover up the crime.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: The revelations being made by Amnesty International here are something that the Islamic Human Rights Commission had been insisting upon earlier as well. Tell us what you think.

Kazim: We welcome the report that Amnesty International has produced with regards to the testimonies of what has actually happened and so on and so forth. It echoes pretty much the blow-by-blow account that we have been giving since December as things were unfolding on that fatal 48 hours or so where these massacres were actually taking place. It also details the evidence that has been gathered by us on the base of which we filed a complaint to the International Criminal Court.

So if there was any lingering doubt in anyone’s mind, the fact that another human rights groups, Amnesty International, has come out with something along these lines it leaves no room for any excuses to be made about what has gone on in that time.

And I think it is about time that people start to recognize that there has been a serious problem. We have been calling on Britain to make sure that this is something that has been done. We have called on the Commonwealth for this to be recognized and whatever and really there is absolutely no excuse. Everyone is saying the same thing. There is consensus within the human rights fraternity about what is actually going on. People have made their own verifications and so on and so forth. We had absolutely no doubt right from the beginning, we knew, we were on contact with those people, so we knew what was going on and [we were] absolutely confident about what we were reporting.

Press TV: Now speaking of that case that has been filed in the ICC by the Islamic Human Rights Commission, how far has that progressed and will this report by the Amnesty International provide some impetus to it?  

Kazim: I think it is something that is ongoing. It is not something that we are going to be ..., we have had a response that the whole thing has been recognized and acknowledged that this case has actually been filed in terms of adding to the pressure on the ICC to actually take action and this report will be another aspect of making people realize that this is something that is going on and it is a crime that cannot be ignored, it is not something that can be brushed under the carpet. We have done a lot of work in terms of raising awareness about this issue from day one, so I think the International Criminal Court has no other option but to go down this route of actually making sure that those people are going to be prosecuted.

But I think it is also important to recognize that there is a responsibility upon the Nigerian government that instead of holding Sheikh Zakzaky and his wife and other people in the Islamic movement of Nigeria prisoner, they should be releasing them unconditionally immediately and that the people who should be imprisoned are the very people who have perpetrated this massacre, the sections of the Nigerian army which were involved in this.

Press TV: Well speaking of that though, of course let’s not forget Nigeria right now is grappling with Boko Haram insurgency and terrorist operations. Why then crackdown on the very people and the very movement that has been standing up against that ideology or that kind of terrorism?  

Kazim: I think one of the things we need to understand is the geopolitical nature of what is being required by the Western masters in terms of painting all kind of religiosity in the same way, painting with the same brush as it were and also the fact that Boko Haram is a useful tool that can be used ... carrying out operations against them but actually nothing effective has actually been done whereas they have been happy to harm civilians in the way that they have and I think we also need to recognize that Sheikh Zakzaky stood up for the issue of Palestine ... and opposition to Israeli atrocities in Palestine is something that is difficult ... by Western governments so it is a case of trying to make sure that any kind of opposition to Israeli atrocities, to Zionist atrocities is not going to be recognized in any kind of positive way.

So this is a way of trying to malign his movement. We know that it is an unarmed group that is being carrying out these things and raising the issue of Palestine and we have got many times Sheikh Zakzaky actually saying that the most powerful weapon they have is the truth and we need to make sure that this very nature of Sheikh Zakzaky’s Islamic movement of Nigeria is something that is recognized and ... without what’s serving the minds of anyone so that when people look at this issue, they look at it from the prison of recognizing that these people were massacred. They were unarmed and this is where this whole problem started from.

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