Islamic court spares woman from stoning until 2004

An Islamic appeal court in northern Nigeria’s Katsina State on Monday gave a 30-year-old woman sentenced to death for adultery a reprieve until January 2004. It also deferred hearings on her appeal to 8 July.

Amina Lawal, who was sentenced to death by stoning on 19 March by a lower sharia court, will now have 18 months to wean her five-month-old baby girl, Wasila, even if her appeal fails, presiding judge Aliu Abdullahi ruled. His ruling came in response to a request by her defence lawyer for the sentence to be overturned or for Lawal to be given adequate time to bring up her baby if the appeal failed.

Lawal was the second woman to be sentenced to death by stoning by an Islamic court since states in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north started adopting the strict Sharia legal code two years ago. Safiya Hussaini, given a similar sentence in Sokoto State last year, had her conviction quashed on the same day Lawal received hers.

As happened in Hussaini’s case, a man whom Lawal identified during the trial as the father of her child was freed for lack of evidence, whereas the baby was regarded as evidence of her guilt.

The sentence of death by stoning has attracted widespread international condemnation from governments and human rights groups. The Nigerian government itself has described the strict application of Sharia as unconstitutional and discriminatory against Muslims and urged reform in
the 12 states that have adopted the code. The states have so far refused to do so.

Sharia prescribes punishments such as the amputation of limbs for stealing and floggings for the drinking of alcohol. Its application has heightened religious and ethnic tension in Nigeria, which has just about equal numbers of Muslims and Christians.

Thousands of people have died in religious and ethnic violence, associated with the adoption of sharia, that have erupted in different parts of the country over the past two years.