Sharia court frees woman charged with adultery

An Islamic court in the northern Nigerian state of Sokoto acquitted on Wednesday a 17-year-old woman charged with adultery, which carries a sentence of death by stoning. Hafsatu Abubakar was freed by Sharia court Judge Bawa Sahabi Tumbawal on the grounds that evidence alleging that adultery resulted in the birth of her one-year-old baby was contradictory. He said the accused had no case to answer. Abubakar Imam, the laywer for the accused, had told the court that the pregnancy could have resulted from her marriage to her former husband, which was dissolved 18 months ago. Imam withdrew Tumbawal's previous confession that she had an unlawful sexual relationship with another man. Imam is also the lawyer for Safiya Husseini Tungar-Tudu, 35, who is appealing her sentence of death by stoning ruled in October 2001 by a Sharia court in the same state. At the preliminary hearing of her appeal last week, Imam withdrew Tungar-Tudu's confession to having had an illicit sexual relationship. Instead he told the court that the pregnancy, which resulted in the birth of her baby, could have come from her former husband from whom she was divorced two years ago. Under Islamic law, he said, a seven-year period is allowed during which a woman can still have a baby with a former husband. About a dozen states in Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north have in the past two years adopted the strict Sharia or Islamic legal code, prescribing punishments including limb amputation for stealing, flogging for drinking of alcohol, and stoning to death for adultery. Local and international human rights groups have condemned the Sharia penalties as violations of fundamental human rights in contravention of international treaties to which Nigeria is a signatory.