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Woman freed of adultery charge
Lagos (Nigeria) 26 March 2002 - A Sharia court in Nigeria has upheld the appeal of a Muslim woman who had been convicted of adultery under Islamic law and sentenced to death by stoning. Safiya Husaini won her case after the court in the northern town of Sokoto, said that the original ruling was unsound.
But as the verdict was announced, it emerged that a second woman had been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery. A Sharia court at Bakori in Katsina State sentenced Amina Lawal to die after she confessed to having had a child while divorced.
In the courtroom in Sokoto, Safiya, smiling broadly, was surrounded by the world's media as she held her one-year-old daughter in her arms. It was the conception of Safiya's child out of wedlock that had been proof enough at the first trial of her adultery.
But in Monday's ruling, Judge Mohammed Tambari-Uthman said that because the alleged act had taken place before adultery became a criminal offence under Islamic law, her case should be dismissed. "The first court that convicted her did not follow the appropriate procedure. The police report also did not give all the necessary information related to the offence," he said.
The BBC Lagos correspondent, Dan Issacs, says the ruling will be welcomed by human rights groups around the world. Anti-adultery laws, however, remain on the statute books in 12 northern Nigerian States, which have reintroduced Sharia law in the past two years. Under Islamic law as practiced in northern Nigeria, pregnancy outside marriage is sufficient evidence to convict a woman.
In contrast, four eye-witnesses are required for a man to be found guilty of adultery. The man named by Ms Lawal as the father of her baby girl denied having had sex with her, and charges against him were dropped, reports the French news agency, AFP.
She has 30 days to appeal against the sentence. Federal Justice Minister Kanu Agbabi last week made public, a letter he had written to the governors of the northern states, advising them to “take measures to amend or modify the jurisdiction of the courts imposing these punishments.” He said that Muslims should not be subjected to more severe punishments than other Nigerians.
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