Tobias Sylvester
The leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, has alleged that the condition at the Indian hospital where he is receiving treatment with his wife, Zeenat, is another “detention facility that is even stricter and worse than that of Nigeria.”
KanyiDaily had reported that the Shiite leader and his wife flew to India on Monday following a Kaduna court order last week.
In a statement on Wednesday from the hospital in New Delhi, El-Zakzaky said there were police armed with guns and many staff of the Nigerian embassy at the hospital, adding “we were brought into another detention that we only came based on trust.”
He added, “Due to this, we think that based on everything we have seen so far indicates to us that we are not safe here. We were just brought to another detention.”
On the nature of their ailments, he said his wife Zeenah had a full bullet lodged in her body that needed to be removed and also needed of a knee replacement surgery.
The IMN leader said he had small fragments in his eyes, hands and right thigh that were slowly releasing toxins into his system which caused a lot of complications.
He also revealed that these were later discovered to be the cause of the mini-strokes he suffered on two occasions.
Read the full transcript of Mr El-Zakzaky’s statement below. The transcript was translated from Hausa to English.
Right now, we are in the city of Delhi in India. Like you all know, we came here for medical treatment due to some ailments that I and my wife Zeenat have been suffering from.
There is a bullet in Zeenat’s body and there is also the need for her to get her two knee caps replaced amongst other ailments.
On my own part, there are also particles of bullets that were broken into pieces in my eyes, hands and thighs which have been poisonous to my body.
I think what they are supposed to do first of all is to extract these bullets which I know the surgery cannot be done in Nigeria hence the reason for my referral abroad.
Secondly, the poison needs to be extracted from my body, some of it they said is in my bones and they said the surgery will take some time.
I also have problems with my eyes. Since after the second surgery, my eyes have been weak which I was also advised to travel to India for surgery.
We are happy and we know that by coming here, we’ll get a befitting hospital that will perform the surgery. The medical advice to come to this hospital which they call Mendata was given to us by some foreign doctors that visited us in Nigeria and that was why we requested we should be brought to this hospital.
While in Nigeria, we got information that the United States Embassy had given and instruction that we shouldn’t be accepted in this hospital when we arrive.
We also heard that they obeyed the order and said they won’t accept us so we were even thinking of going elsewhere in India but later on, we were informed that that order had been lifted.
We then proceeded to India. On our arrival, we were received by the hospital staff from the airport and they escorted us down to the hospital.
While driving from the airport to the hospital in an ambulance, the staff of the hospital were narrating how some people besieged the airport just to see us before proceeding to the hospital, but they (the hospital) tricked them by keeping two ambulances at the location where my supporters were waiting and drove us out in another ambulance at a different location.
They also said another set of people besieged the hospital just to see our arrival but they decided to use an alternative entrance to the hospital because the were trying to avert any stampede.
When we got here, a staff of the Nigerian embassy told us that they already assembled with the staff of this hospital and security operatives discussing on what to do when we arrive. They later took us to an Indian security outfit that is even more sophisticated than the one we were kept in Nigeria.
Back home in Nigeria, they agreed that nobody should take us to any other hospital aside the hospital of our choice but we got to realize that the doctors they brought to us were there just to give advice. We then told them we won’t allow any other doctor aside our trusted doctors to attend to us so that they don’t do to us what they couldn’t do with their bullets in Nigeria.
All what we have seen here, have shown us that there is no trust, they just brought us here for another detention. I have been in detention for about thirteen years but I’ve never seen this kind of security that I’m seeing here, even at the door of my hospital room, there are many security personnel waiting, heavily armed.
They didn’t even allow me to go to the next room, I started asking myself, all these while I’ve been in detention, I’ve never seen this type. Even if I’m in the cell, they usually lock us up around 9 p.m. and open the cell around 7 a.m. and they allow us to go anywhere we want in the area we are.
Even Kirikiri prison will not affect me psychologically like this one. It will not be possible for us to come out of detention just to get medical attention and now find ourself in another form of detention. We won’t submit ourselves to people we don’t trust. There is a need for us to go back home since it has been agreed that we should travel out to get medical attention and India is not a place we can trust.
There are other countries that have volunteered to take care of our treatment, some are Malaysia, Indonesia and Turkey. We can choose from amongst these three.
