Al-Mustapha sues cleric for defamation

 Samuel Aruwan

A Shari’a court of law sitting at Daura Road, Kaduna, will this morning open hearing into a suit filed by Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, former chief security officer to the late Head of State Gen. Sani Abacha, against a renown Islamic scholar.

Al-Mustapha had filed a criminal direct complaint against the Kaduna-based Sheikh Sanusi Khalil, a firebrand preacher known for his stiff opposition to President Goodluck Jonathan’s perceived efforts to contest in the 2015 general elections, claiming his character was maligned.
In the summons, the former security officer said that Khalil had used a comment made by former President Olusegun Obasanjo that the Jonathan administration was training some 1,000 snipers to defame him.
He alleged that the preacher had, in one of his sermons last December at the Sani Zangon Daura Juma’at Mosque, Kaduna, claimed that it was Al-Mustapha who was contracted to train the killer squad mentioned in Obasanjo’s controversial letter to the president.

In the summons, the complainant quoted Khalil as saying that he (Khalil) knew where the killer squad held its meetings, the people in attendance and other details, claiming that “a brother” gave him the information.
Blueprint was reliably informed that after the charge was filed, many prominent clerics, including Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, had tried to intercede in order to settle the matter out of court, but Al-Mustapha refused based on his belief that only a court of law could clear him of the accusation allegedly made by the preacher.