NIGERIA: Sharia: Condemned Woman Knows Fate in 2 Weeks

An Islamic court in Funtua, Katsina State brought to an end the trial on appeal of a woman sentenced to death by stoning for bearing a child out of wedlock, adjourning for two weeks to consider its verdict.

 The trial, the second such case to have aroused controversy in the country, is seen by rights campaigners as a key battle in their fight to prevent a spate of what they see as unjust punishments against women following the reintroduction of Islamic law, or Sharia.

 But it is also seen as a test of northern Nigerian officials' determination to enforce their own hardline interpretation of the legal code in a country where religious rivalry is a key political issue and sometimes a cause of violent civil unrest.

 On the last day of hearings into the case of 30-year-old Amina Lawal, the upper Sharia court in Funtua, heard the prosecution argue that Lawal's 1st trial had not been in breach of the Islamic legal code.

 Prosecutor Isma'il Ibrahim called for her to be stoned to death, in line with the ruling earlier this year of the Bakori Sharia court near Lawal's home village.

 Lawal sat passively cradling her baby daughter throughout the packed hearing but blinked back tears afterwards when she told AFP that she would accept whatever verdict the court came to.

 "I will leave everything to God," she said.

 Defence lawyer Musa Aliyu Yawuri said he was confident that his team had done enough to convince the court to overturn the judgement.

 At the previous hearing, Yawuri had argued that Lawal's conviction was unsafe.

 She had had no legal representation, he said, and had only been told what she was charged with by its Arabic term -- "Zina" -- which, as a Hausa-speaking rural housewife, she could not understand.

 Critically, he argued, even if Lawal did have sexual relations after her second divorce, this must have taken place before Katsina state formally adopted the Sharia penal code in June 2001.

 "Giving birth is not a crime, even if adultery is," he said. Lawal's case is the second stoning trial to have attracted the attention of international rights campaigners and the Abuja-based women's rights groups that are funding her defence.

 As with the successful defence of 35-year-old Safiya Husseini earlier this year, the campaigners believe they must fight to overturn Lawal's individual conviction before bringing pressure on the government to end northern Nigeria's return to Islamic law.

 Whatever the verdict on August 19, the Funtua court has already ordered that any stoning should not be carried out until January 2004 at the earliest, allowing Lawal more time to raise her 3rd child.