Kaduna-based newspaper demands release of detained editor, reporter

In less than 12 hours that the State Security Service agents, soldiers and policemen arrested a Kaduna-based newspaper, Al-Mizan’s Editor, Mallam Musa Muhammad Awwal, and a reporter, Mallam Aliyu Saleh, the management of the newspaper have asked the security agents to released its staff with an immediate effect.

In a statement issued by the newspaper’s Editor-in-Chief, Ibrahim Musa, he disclosed that over 40 security agents in 10 cars and an Armoured Personnel Carrier swooped on Aliyu’s home in Rigasa, Kaduna and manhandled him with other occupants in his house before he was arrested alongside his wife.

He added that Aliyu’s wife was dropped by the security agents before allegedly invading Saleh’s home located close to Makarfi Road by Nnamdi Azikiwe Way.

He noted that the security agents beat his wife and ailing son up and whisked the editor away.

The statement reads in part; “On behalf of the I.M.Publications, publishers of Al- Mizan Newspaper, we hereby call for the immediate and unconditional release of our staff whose arrest has violated due process and their human rights.

“We shall not relent in all efforts of making this issue publicized all over the world which will subsequently reveal the inadequacies of the security operatives.

“We hereby call on the Nigerian Union of Journalists, Guild of Editors, Press Union of the Islamic World, human and civil rights groups as well as all concerned and well meaning personalities that believe in fairness and justice to humanity to outrightly denounce this atrocity perpetrated by security personnel in the name of providing security,” Musa added.

#featured