January 14
Nigerian
Condemned to Die Appeals
By
GILBERT Da COSTA,
ABUJA,
Nigeria - A Nigerian woman sentenced by an Islamic court to death by
stoning for having a child outside wedlock began her appeal process Monday,
as European politicians denounced the sentence.
Safiya
Hussaini Tungar-Tudu, 35, was convicted of adultery last October in the
northern state of Sokoto and sentenced to be stoned while buried up to her
waist in sand.
Opposition
to Islamic law, or shariah, in predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria has
left thousands of dead in religious clashes since early 2000, authorities
say.
European
parliament members sent a letter to President Olusegun Obasanjo thanking
him for intervening to prevent Hussaini's execution over the weekend, and
urging that capital punishment be abolished in Nigeria.
During
a brief court appearance at the start of Hussaini's appeal in Sokoto city,
10 defense lawyers argued the Islamic court had failed to determine whether
she had ever been ``legally married,'' a prerequisite for adultery.
If
she wasn't married, the defense said, the court should have treated her
case as premarital sex, which carries a lesser punishment under Islamic law.
The
lawyers also argued that female residents of Sokoto state were allowed to
conceive a child with their former husbands up to seven years after they
had been divorced.
During
the October trial, Hussaini said she had been divorced for about two years.
The baby girl prosecutors say was conceived outside wedlock is now about 1
year old.
Defense
lawyers also said Hussaini's child had been conceived before shariah law
was officially imposed in Sokoto state in January 2001, and that the death
penalty prescribed by Islamic doctrine could not be carried out
retroactively.
``The
(shariah court's) legal procedure was irrevocably bad, therefore the
judgment should be declared null and void,'' said Abdulkadir Imam Ibrahim,
the lawyer leading her defense.
Prosecutors
asked for time to study defense arguments, and the case was postponed until
March 18. If Hussaini loses her appeal, she can take her case to Nigeria's
Supreme Court.
In
a letter made public Monday, 77 members of the European Parliament asked
Obasanjo to block the death penalty. His government has financially backed
Hussaini's legal defense.
Writing
on behalf of the Europeans, lawmaker John Corrie thanked Obasanjo for
intervening to prevented the stoning from taking place Saturday and urged
him to set aside the execution.
``No
one should underestimate the strong views in many countries around the
world that all laws should respect international human rights standards,''
Corrie wrote. ``I trust that you as the president of Nigeria will do all in
your powers to stop this and future executions.''
On
Jan. 3, a 35-year-old man convicted of murdering a woman and her two
toddlers was hanged in Katsina state, the first execution since Islamic law
began being implemented by a dozen predominantly Muslim states in Nigeria
in early 2000.
Nigeria,
a nation of 120 million, is riven by religious, ethnic and political
divisions that periodically flare into violence. Obasanjo won the
presidency in 1999, ending 15 years of military rule.
THE IRISH TIMES
14/01/02
Mother
sentenced to death by stoning
NIGERIA:
A young Nigerian woman who became pregnant outside marriage may be about to
pay the price demanded by Islamic Sharia law: she is sentenced to be stoned
to death. Gary Younge reportsThe stones can be as big as your fist. The
method, says the attorney-general in Nigeria's Sokoto state, is up to the
judge."They will dig a pit, then they will put the convict in a way
that she will not be able to escape, and then she will be stoned,"
says Aliyu Abubaker Sanyinna. "Another way is that she could be tied
up against a tree or a pillar."That, so far, has been the extent of
the flexibility of the courts in northern Nigeria to the death sentence
passed on Safiya Husseini. Her crime, if you can call it that, is sex
outside of marriage. She calls it rape; the judiciary insists it was
adultery. The evidence: the word of the father and her pregnant state. The
punishment: under the most severe interpretation of Sharia law - to be
stoned to death in public. And the man concerned, who withdrew his
confession to her parents and the police that he was the father, has now
fled."It takes a man and a woman for there to be adultery," says
the leader of a Nigerian-based women's rights organisation. "But only
the woman is being punished, and she is being punished in a manner that is
not in keeping with Sharia law or the tenets of Islam." Ms Husseini
(35) was sentenced last June and, following one stay of execution, will
have her appeal heard today.Yakubu Abubakar, who is already married to two
other women, comes from the same village of Tungar Tudo in north-west
Nigeria. "He said he loved me," says Ms Husseini, a divorcee with
two children. "He used fetishes and magic on several occasions. When I
was in the bush one day he ambushed me and forced me. That happened three
times. I found myself pregnant."Rumour soon spread round the village
and the police arrived not long after. Originally, says Ms Husseini, Mr
Yakubu was to acknowledge the child and look after her until the birth. But
when her father asked him to marry her, Mr Yakubu's elder brother forbade
it.And when it was clear what the repercussions might be, Mr Yakubu bailed
out. "I was taken to Sharia court," says Ms Husseini. "Yakubu
said he had never met me. He denied everything and said he had never done
anything to me. I had witnesses who heard him admit \. I don't know why
they were not listened to." Ms Husseini could not deny everything
because she already had Adama, who is now 11 months old. She did not say
she had been raped in the first trial. And by this stage Mr Yakubu had
already bolted. "I felt like dying that day because of the injustice,"
says Ms Husseini, who was originally sentenced to die as soon as she had
finished weaning Adama. "Then the judge said I was guilty of adultery.
When he passed sentence I broke down in tears. I never thought there would
be such a penalty. It is because I am poor, my family is poor, and I am a
woman. He used his money to get away with it."While Ms Husseini's case
is extreme, the concerns it raises for women in particular and the country
in general are by no means unique. Last year a teenage single mother, who
became pregnant after she says she was raped by three men, was given 100
lashes in public and then forced to marry one of several men who had
presented themselves to her. The courts say she was 17; her parents say she
was 14."The situation here is very fragile, particularly for women who
are living alone or with their children," says the representative of
one Nigerian women's rights organisation. "There are moral police who
are going around looking for infractions and women living alone are upset
because nobody knows who is watching you or what they might say about you."Nine
of Nigeria's 36 states currently operate under Sharia law. But while Sharia
has been customary in many of these areas for the best part of a century it
used to run in tandem with the civil code and was never implemented with
this degree of harshness.Its recent resurgence in the north is the product
of broader developments taking place in Nigeria which have little to do
with religion. With the collapse of military rule under dictator Sani
Abacha two years ago, and the introduction of democracy came the
re-emergence of longstanding tensions, particularly between the principally
Muslim north and the non-Muslim (largely Christian and animist) south. In
the north, politicians sought a popular rallying point against the endemic
and prevailing corruption, widespread crime and state pillaging that had
characterised Abacha's era and seized on the most severe version of Sharia.
Saudi Arabia and Sudan sent delegations to support Zamfara, the first state
to adopt sharia, and donated large sums of money.The result was an extreme,
and somewhat sadistic, legal framework in some areas of the north and a
sharp increase in ethnic tensions throughout the country. This has proved a
serious embarrassment to the federal government on the international
scene."Some of our brothers in the northern part of the country have
made so much politics out of Sharia that it is denting the image of
Nigeria," said justice minister Mr Bola Ige, before he was murdered
last month."The federal government wants the states to temper justice
with mercy," a spokesman from the Nigerian High Commission said in
London. "It will use all means at its disposal to ensure that the
state takes notice of the international outcry and spares her
life."The divisions have also thoroughly destabilised the country.
Over the past two years 4,000 people have died in clashes between Muslims
and Christians in the north. Those campaigning for Ms Husseini are not
opposing the right of the states to impose Sharia, which they believe would
be a tactical mistake, but insisting that even within Sharia the verdict is
both flawed and exceptionally harsh.
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