Islamic court upholds death-by-stoning sentence

An Islamic appeal court in Katsina State, northern Nigeria, on Monday upheld a death sentence imposed by a lower court on a woman found guilty of adultery. Amina Lawal (30) was sentenced to death by stoning in March by a Sharia court in the small town of Bakori for giving birth out of wedlock. A man she identified as the father of the baby was discharged for want of evidence. "We hereby uphold the judgment of the Bakori Sharia court that you be sentenced to death by stoning," said Abdullahi Aliyu Katsina, president of the Upper Sharia Court, who presided over the appeal in the larger town of Funtua. The judge also maintained a preliminary ruling, issued earlier by the court, that the execution of the sentence would be postponed by 18 months, by which time Lawal’s eight-month-old baby would have been weaned. On hearing the ruling, Lawal burst into tears while cradling her baby. Her lawyers said they would appeal against the sentence in a higher court. Lawal was the second woman to be sentenced to death by stoning since states in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north began introducing the Islamic legal code in 2000. The first, Safiya Husseini, was sentenced last year in Sokoto State, but that verdict was quashed on 19 March, the same day Lawal received her sentence. Her sentencing attracted widespread international condemnation from governments and human rights groups. The Nigerian government has also described such an application of Islamic law as unconstitutional and discriminatory against Muslims. It has urged reform in the 12 states that have adopted the code, but these remain defiant. The application of the law, which prescribes punishments such as the amputation of limbs for stealing and flogging for drinking alcohol, has heightened religious and ethnic tension in Africa’s most populous country, which has roughly equal numbers of Muslims and Christians. There have been intermittent outbreaks of violence between Christians and Muslims across the country since Zamfara became the first state to adopt the Sharia in early 2000. Thousands of people have died in the violence.