Death-by-stoning couple freed on bail

A couple convicted of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning in Nigeria's northern Niger State were last week freed on bail by a Shari'ah court, news organisations reported on Tuesday. On 8 October, a bail application hearing for the couple had been adjourned to 22 October. Journalists and lawyers turned up for the scheduled hearing only to find that the accused had been released last week, AFP reported. Ahmadu Ibrahim said that he and his former lover, Fatima Usman, who is pregnant, only learnt that they had been sentenced to death moments before being released last Thursday, the BBC reported. The couple was originally sentenced to a five-year jail term for adultery but the judge at an appeal hearing imposed the death sentence, saying the earlier court had used the wrong penal code to try the case. Usman has a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter out of wedlock, allegedly fathered by Ibrahim. Lawyers said she was not only unwell but was now eight months pregnant, this time by her former husband, from whom she is now divorced, BBC had earlier reported. At least five people, including three men and two women, are facing sentences of death by stoning in northern Nigeria, where a dozen states have adopted the strict Shari'ah legal code since late 1999. The only death sentence carried out under Shari'ah law so far was the hanging in Katsina State in January of a man, Sani Rodi, who was convicted of killing a woman and her two children. The Nigerian government has described the strict application of Shari'ah as unconstitutional and discriminatory against Muslims. It has called for the law to be reformed in the 12 states that have adopted it. The states have so far refused to do so.