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Nigerian court rejected Amina’s appeal
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Additional
Reporting By Hany Mohamed, IOL Staff
FUNTUA,
Nigeria, August 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – The defense
team of a young woman sentenced to death by stoning after she
confessed of bearing a child out of wedlock, along huwith man rights
organizations, will appeal the verdict in front of the Higher
Cassation Court in Abuja town.
A
Nigerian Islamic court on Monday, August 19, refused the appeal and
ordered 30-year-old Amina Lawal to be executed once her child, Wasila,
is weaned, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported. Therefore, the
execution of this verdict will not take place before the year 2004.
Under
Islamic rulings, this sentence can not be executed unless the child is
weaned and the mother finds someone with whom the child will be safe,
and in case this is not fulfilled, the ruling can’t be executed.
The judgment was a slap in the face for a coalition of lawyers, activists and federal officials who had chosen the case to challenge the reintroduction of the Islamic law, or Sharia, in the north of the
country.
Amina’s
legal team announced an immediate appeal. Her team of Abuja-based
lawyers and rights campaigners had argued that her conviction was
unfair, that her confession had been retracted and that she had never
understood the case against her, AFP said.
Lawal,
a divorcee, gave birth in January and was denounced by police to the
Sharia Court in Bakori.
She
told the authorities that the father of Wasila, her third child, was
Yahaya Mahmud, her boyfriend of 11 months, whom she said had seduced
her with an offer of marriage, the court heard.
Mahmud
admitted being Lawal’s boyfriend, but swore on the Qur’an that he
was not the father. He was discharged. Lawal was tried and convicted
based on her confession.
This
mirrored Nigeria’s previous stoning case, that of 35-year-old Safiya
Husseini, who also willingly confessed of having sex out of wedlock,
but was not charged because her action took place before the
introduction of the Sharia laws.
In
Husseini’s case earlier this year, the defense managed to get her
acquitted on a series of technicalities.
Nigiria’s
Mufti Ibrahim Saleh El-Husseiny said that people should know first the
duties required of them under Islamic rule before being punished for
neglecting them, adding that applying Sharia should not take place
abruptly without taking into consideration its specifics and goals.
The
Islamic Sharia can be apply only after people are informed of it and
taught its rulings, said Mohamed Al-Awa, Islamic thinker and law
professor, said in an interview with IslamOnline.
