Sharia court sets adultery appeal ruling for 25 March

An Islamic court in Nigeria's northern Sokoto State on Monday adjourned ruling on an appeal by a 35-year-old mother sentenced to death for adultery. A lower court sentenced Safiya Husseini Tunga-Tudu to death by stoning in October 2001, in accordance with Sharia law. The sentence followed her failed attempt to get an Islamic court to compel the man she accused of raping and impregnating her to provide support for her one-year-old child. Presiding Judge Muhammed Bello Silame, who led four other judges, deferred ruling by one week after hearing the prosecution's response to 10 grounds of appeal, filed by the defence in January. Safiya withdrew an earlier confession that the man who raped her was the father of her baby. Instead, she said a former husband from whom she was now divorced, was the father of her child. Apart from seeking to take advantage of a provision in Islamic law that allows a woman to have a baby with her husband seven years after divorce, the defence counsel is also challenging the jurisdiction of the lower court to pass the death sentence. The case has attracted international condemnation with several organisations and governments, including the European Union, calling on President Olusegun Obasanjo to ensure the sentence is not carried out. In the past three years more than a dozen states in Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north have introduced the strict Sharia code stipulating punishments such as death for adultery, amputation of limbs for stealing, and public flogging for premarital sex and drinking of alcohol. But Safiya would be the first to face death by stoning if she loses her appeal. The introduction of strict Islamic law has heightened religious tension in Africa's most populous country, split almost evenly between a largely Christian, non-Muslim south and a mainly Islamic north, leading to frequent outbursts of religious violence. Though a born-again Christian, Obasanjo has been reluctant to intervene over the introduction of the Sharia legal code, citing Nigeria's federal constitution under which states could make their own laws.