Man, can you believe this?
Islamic court rejects Nigerian mother's appeal on stoning verdict
sg.news.yahoo.com
Tuesday August 20, 1:14 AM
A Nigerian Islamic court threw out an appeal by a young woman sentenced to be stoned to death for bearing a child out of wedlock and ordered her to be executed once her child is weaned.
To cries of "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest) from the public galleries, the judge ordered 30-year-old Amina Lawal to be taken to a public place, buried up to her neck and put to death by stoning.
The judgement was a slap in the face for a coalition of lawyers, activists and federal officials who had chosen the case to challenge the reintroduction of the strict Islamic legal code, or sharia, in the north of the country.
Amina's legal team announced an immediate appeal. If they fail, their client could become the first Nigerian to be stoned to death since 12 northern states reintroduced sharia.
Her team of Abuja-based lawyers and rights campaigners had argued that her conviction was unfair, that her confession had been retracted and that she had never understood the case against her.
But a four-judge panel meeting at the upper sharia court in Funtua, 300 kilometres (190 miles) north of Abuja, dismissed their arguments.
"We uphold your conviction of death by stoning as prescribed by the sharia. This judgement will be carried out as soon as your baby is weaned," the lead judge told Lawal, who sat before the bench cradling her eight-month-old daughter.
A cry of "Allahu Akbar" resounded around the packed courtroom as Lawal, a shy and slight village woman dressed in a bright red dress and deep purple open-faced veil, burst into tears.
At an earlier hearing in January during which she was not represented, Lawal told reporters she was confident that she would be cleared now that she had high-powered lawyers behind her.
"I feel bad, I'm not happy at all. We thought they were going to discharge her," said Clara Obazele, a spokeswoman for Women's Affairs Minister Aisha Ismail. "We're going to appeal the judgement."
Lawal's defence lawyer Aliyu Musa Yawuri said: "We're not satisfied with this decision, and we're going to appeal."
Lawal, a divorcee, gave birth in January and was denounced by police to the Sharia court in Bakori.
She told the authorities that the father of Wasila, her third child, was Yahaya Mahmud, her boyfriend of 11 months, whom she said had seduced her with an offer of marriage, the court heard.
Mahmud admitted being Lawal's boyfriend, but swore on the Koran that he was not the father. He was discharged. Lawal was tried and convicted based on her confession.
This mirrored Nigeria's previous stoning case, that of 35-year-old Safiya Husseini. Under Sharia's strict rules of proof, witnesses are required to convict a man of adultery, while a woman may be condemned for falling pregnant.
In Husseini's case earlier this year the defence managed to get her acquitted on a series of technicalities.
Before Monday's verdict, Ibrahim had expressed concern that if Lawal were to be stoned to death, it could open the floodgates to dozens of similar cases across northern Nigeria.
The defence had hoped to safeguard her life before mounting an action to challenge the legality of Sharia trials in the higher courts. |
