The Kaduna State Government says it will appeal the judgment of the state high court that discharged and acquitted the leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, of all charges brought against him by the state government on Wednesday.
PREMIUM TIMES how Justice Gideon Kurada of the Kaduna State High Court upheld the no-case submission by Mr El-Zakzaky and his wife, Zeenat.
The court said the charges were retroactive as the state government arraigned them for an alleged act that was not a crime at the time they were allegedly committed.
The court held that the charges were filed against Mr El-Zakzaky and his wife in 2018, in pursuant to a Penal law enacted by the state government in 2017, over an alleged offence committed in 2015.
But the lead prosecution counsel, Dari Bayero, told Daily Trust Thursday night that there was no doubt that the government would appeal the case.
Mr Bayero said: “We are going to appeal, there is no doubt about it. In fact, we have obtained the court judgment because we are not in agreement with My Lord’s reasoning and conclusion. It is not in consonance with the facts on ground.”
The Judgement
According to one of the defence counsels, Sadau Garba, the court found that the eight-count charge filed in 2018 against Mr El-Zakzaky was pursuant to the penal law enacted by the state government in 2017, while the defendants were alleged to have committed the crime in 2015.
Also, the lead counsel to the defendants, Marshal Abubakar, who represented the counsel to the case, Femi Falana SAN, told reporters that the trial of Mr El-Zakzaky and his wife Zeenat has come to end as the court found them not guilty of the alleged crime filed against them by the Kaduna State government.
“The court ruled that the charge was incompetent as the court agreed that El-Zakzaky and his wife had committed no offence,” Mr Abubakar said.
The court also ruled that the events of December 12 and 15 December 2015 were not an offence and cannot be attributed to the defendants.
“The court, thereby, discharged and acquitted the defendants as there should have been no charge in the first place. No party asked for a fine,” he said.
The Kaduna State Director of Public Prosecution, Dari Bayero, had declined to speak to reporters after the court judgment.
The couple has been standing trial in the court for the past four years on an eight-count charge of culpable homicide, disruption of public peace and unlawful assembly among others.
The government accused them of being responsible for the death of a soldier when soldiers massacred over 300 protesting Shiites in December 2015.
