Reprieve from flogging sought for girl

A Nigerian human rights group launched an appeal on Tuesday for legal aid to obtain a reprieve for a 17-year-old girl sentenced to 180 strokes of the cane in the northern state of Zamfara for having premarital sex.

In a statement sent to IRIN, Baobab for Women’s Human Rights, said a team of seven lawyers were filing an appeal for a stay of execution of the sentence on Bariya Ibrahim Magazu due on 27 January. The lawyers are also seeking to quash the September 2000 conviction of Magazu, who gave birth mid-December.

“We are asking for aid from all those with experience and knowledge of Muslim laws in preparing the appeal.
We will be asking first to quash the conviction, and failing that for it to be mitigated,” Ayesha Imam, the spokeswoman for the group, said in the statement which described the case as the first of its kind in Nigeria.
“In particular, we are looking for similar cases from other Muslim law jurisdictions so that we can consider using the same argumentation and citations from Koranic surahs, hadith and jurists,” she added.

Baobab for Women’s Human Rights, Imam said, was rebuffed when it met Governor Ahmed Sani to seek clemency for Magazu. Similar protests from foreign governments, human rights groups and even Nigeria’s federal government were also rejected.

“However, the Governor agreed that he would be willing to consider arguments made in Muslim law,” Imam said.

Magazu had told an Islamic court, where she was charged after being found pregnant while not being married, that she was coerced by her father into having sexual intercourse with three men to whom he was indebted. Her evidence was discounted and she was sentenced to 100 strokes for premarital sex and another 80 lashes for making unsubstantiated allegations.

Governor Sani set the pace in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north when he introduced full application of Sharia in December 1999. Since then seven other states in the region have followed suit by adopting full Islamic law. Last year he rejected appeals to grant clemency to a convicted cow thief, whose right wrist was eventually amputated in accordance with the sentence passed by a Sharia court.