In September, 31-year-old Amina Lawal saw a Nigerian court overturn her sentence to be stoned to death for adultery.

Lawal became an international cause celebre in 2002 after she was convicted of adultery by an Islamic Sharia court in the northern Nigeria state of Lagos and sentenced to death by stoning.

But the 4-1 decision by the appeals court to overturn the death by stoning verdict was based largely on procedural issues rather than any recognition on the part of the Islamic court that stoning to death people for adultery might not be an appropriate punishment.

Lawal’s acquittal was based on the appeals court’s findings that the proper number of witnesses did not testify against Lawal and that she became pregnant within two years after divorcing her husband rather than five as the law requires for the pregnancy itself to be used as prima facie evidence of adultery.

That last bit, by the way, is apparently due to a bizarre misunderstanding of human biology embedded in Islamic sharia law. According to The Vanguard (Lagos),

According to the lead defence lawyer, Aliyu Musa Yawuri, under some interpretations of sharia, babies can remain in gestation in a mother’s womb for five years, opening the possibility that her ex-husband could have fathered the child.

Lagos Gov. Bola Tinubu proclaimed that the decision was a victory for the Islamic system of justice,

This is a victory for the sharia legal system. This is a victory for justice. This judgment has made the crucial point that the sharia is a well-developed legal system that places emphasis on objectivity, respect for evidence, serious regard for the truth and a holistic perspective that combines morality and legality.

And apparently a complete ignorance of reproductive biology. That’s an awfully thin thread to hang justice upon.

Source:

Nigerian court overturns stoning sentence in adultery case. Voice of America News, September 26, 2003.

South Africa welcomes the acquittal of Nigeria’s Amina Lawal. ChannelAfrica.Org, September 26, 2003.

Appeal Court Quashes Death Verdict On Amina Lawal. Vanguard (Lagos, Nigeria), September 26, 2003.

Nigerian Woman Avoids Stoning Death. Associated Press, September 25, 2003.

Nigeria erupted into riots in November 2002 after a reporter opined that Mohammed would likely not only have approved of the Miss World beauty pageant, but would likely have taken one of the contestants for his wife. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and others castigated the woman who made that remark, causing her to flee the country for her own safety.

Now a Human Rights Watch report on the incident claims that the Nigerian police and military, among others, fanned the flames of the riots and used the outbreak of violence as cover for extrajudicial killings of political and ethnic opponents.

According to the Human Rights Watch report, Nigerian police did nothing to restrain Muslim protesters who reacted with violence to the newspaper article,

ThisDay in three buses; others used motorcycles. They attacked and burned the newspaper?s regional office on Attahiru Road Malali, ransacked the newspaper depot and distribution centre and made bonfires out of piles of newspapers. There were no casualties, as the newspaper staff were not on the premises at the time. At no point did the police intervene to stop the violence by the protesters or make any arrests, despite the fact that the office of ThisDay was attacked in broad daylight and in full view of many residents and passers-by.

As to the extra-judicial killings by police and military, the Human Rights Watch report alleges,

Human Rights Watch uncovered detailed information on extrajudicial killings of civilians by both the police and the military during the three days of rioting in Kaduna. Instead of restoring law and order, in several instances members of the security forces turned against the very people they were supposed to protect. In some cases, the victims were boys or young men who were shot because they were caught breaking the curfew; in other cases, people were killed or injured when the police or military fired to deter rioting; other people were hit by stray bullets. In a number of instances, the police or military, taking advantage of the general chaos, targeted particular individuals with the specific intention of killing them. Overall, however, it was difficult to ascertain the exact reasons why members of the security forces shot particular individuals or groups of individuals. Despite several efforts, Human Rights Watch was not able to confirm the level at which orders were given for the police and the military to use lethal force. However, these cases form part of a well-documented pattern of extrajudicial killings by the security forces in the context of attempts to restore law and order in Nigeria.

Despite promises by Obsanjano that the perpetrators of the violence would be brought to justice and compensation paid to the victims of the violence, Human Rights Watch reports that neither promise has come close to being fulfilled. Not a single person, for example, was ever arrested in connection with the attack on ThisDay.

Source:

Nigerian police ‘fanned riots’. Alistair Leithead, The BBC, July 21, 2003.

The ?Miss World Riots?: Continued Impunity for Killings in Kaduna. Human Rights Watch, July 3, 2003.

The journalist whose article sparked the Miss World riots in Nigeria that ended up killing 220 people gave an interview to the BBC in March in which she lashed out at Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and others who often seemed to be angrier at her than the rioters — and all over a completely innocuous remark (at least innocuous in any country not beholden to religious extremists).

Isioma Daniel’s article in the newspaper ThisDay sparked riots because she said that Mohammed would not have objected to the Miss World pageant and would have probably taken one of the contestants for a wife.

Frankly living in a country where a man who immerses holy symbols in urine can get a federal grant, it’s a bit bizarre to imagine living in a country where people kill each other over whether or not Mohammed would have enjoyed seeing a little skin at a beauty pageant.

Obasanjo — who vacillates between saying he will crack down on Muslim extremists and appeasing them — said that the article should not have been published and suggested that Daniel could be prosecuted for what she said. Brother. Or as Daniel told the BBC,

I think he should have been criticizing the people who were out in the streets who were killing and rampaging in the name of religion. I think he should have been speaking out harder against the Northern Islamic religious leaders who had encouraged their followers to go out in the streets.

Yes, but this is the same Obasanjo who has managed to find a way to make gasoline scarce and expensive in Nigeria despite that country being one of the world’s leading oil exporters, so the man has a lot of experience with missing the obvious.

The Nigerian state of Zamfara did follow Obasanjo’s lead by issuing a fatwa calling for her death (the northern states of Nigeria have joined the defunct Taliban in adopting an extreme Islamic legal system).

For her part, Daniel said she doesn’t understand what all of the fuss was about,

The particular sentence, the Mohammed sentence, I added in as a last minute thing. I thought it was funny light hearted and I didn’t see it as anything anybody should take seriously or cause much fuss.

Source:

‘Riots writer’ attacks Obasanjo. The BBC, March 12, 2003.

Reacting to negative attention it has received on the subject ahead of the Miss World pageant, the Nigerian government this month reiterated that it will not allow death sentences to be carried out against woman convicted of adultery.

Twelve states in Nigeria’s Muslim-dominated North have adopted Islamic sharia law which calls for death by stoning for individuals convicted of adultery or rape. Several women have been sentenced to be stoned to death under the law, though none of these sentences has been carried out yet.

Nigerian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dubem Onyia said that Nigeria would use “its constitutional powers to thwart any negative ruling, which is deemed injurious to its people.”

Nigerian officials have said before that they the death by stoning sentences are unconstitutional, but they have also soft-pedaled their statements somewhat as they look ahead to nationwide elections in 2003.

Left unanswered was how northern Muslims will view the national government’s increasingly firm anti-sharia stance. Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo is a southern Christian, and violence between Muslims, Christians and animists has claimed more than 8,000 lives since Obasanjo’s 1999 election.

Source:

Nigeria vows to block stoning deaths. Glenn McKenzie, Associated Press, November 10, 2002.

A Nigerian couple recently sentenced to death by stoning for committing adultery were released on bail by a sharia court in order for the woman, Fatima Usman, to give birth to her child.

Usman and her lover, Ahmadu Ibrahim, were originally ordered to be imprisoned after being found guilty of committing adultery. But at their appeal hearing, a judge ruled that the wrong statute had been cited and changed the couple’s sentence to death by stoning.

Nigerian sharia courts have routinely delayed the carrying out of such sentences until the infants is born and weaned.

So far, none of the people sentenced to death in Nigeria has actually had that sentence carried out, but according to the BBC,

But defence lawyers are increasingly concerned that it is only a matter of time before on of the majority Muslim northern states decides to carry out such a sentence.

. . .

Nigeria’s central government has said it is opposed to such sentences being carried out, but says it has no powers to intervene in judgments handed down by Islamic courts in the north of the country.

Source:

Nigeria’s stoning couple freed. The BBC, August 22, 2002.

What if they held a beauty pageant and nobody came? That is the question organizers of Miss World, scheduled for November, are wondering as several contestants have announced they will boycott the contest due to the death sentences passed on women by host country Nigeria.

Contestants from France, Belgium, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Kenya and Ivory Coast have already announced they will not show up at the event. Contestants from Canada, Italy and Sweden have said they will show up for the contest, but will highlight the plight of women who suffer under Islamic sharia law in parts of the country.

Nigeria is divided with Muslims in the North and Christians in the South. Most of the Muslim states have made Islamic law the official state law. As a result a number of young women have been sentenced to death for being pregnant outside of wedlock.

The death sentence imposed on Amina Lawal Kurami has garnered international attention to Nigeria. Kurami was found guilty of adultery after becoming pregnant outside of wedlock. She has been sentenced to being buried up to her neck and then stoned to death, although her sentence has been deferred until 2004 when her child will presumably be weaned.

Nigeria’s president and much of the national state apparatus opposes these sort of sentences and the validity of sharia law has been a hotly contested issue that pits the national government against states. In some cases, Muslim/Christian tensions have boiled over into riots and wholesale murder of one side or the other.

Ironically, the boycott by Miss World contestants would likely be welcome by many Nigerian Muslims. The Miss World contest was brought to Nigeria and endorsed largely by Christian government officials, including Nigeria’s president, and has been vehemently opposed by Muslim groups and parties which claim the pageant is an affront to decency and morality.

Sources:

Group Wants Miss World Beauty Pageant Cancelled. This Day (Lagos), August 22, 2002.

Miss Canada won’t boycott Nigeria pageant. Patrick Brethour, Reuters, October 15, 2002.

An Islamic court in the Nigerian state of Katsina this month postponed the execution by stoning of Amina Lawal, 30, until at least January 2004.

Lawal was convicted of adultery after she gave birth to a baby girl more than nine months after divorcing her husband. Under the extremist Islamist law embrace by some states in Nigeria, that is prima facie evidence of adultery which is punishable by death.

The sentence was delayed to allow Lawal to finish weaning her baby, at which time the court will again take up her case. Nigeria’s national government, however, has said such punishments are unconstitutional and it is unclear what status the Islamic laws will have when 2004 comes around.

As is common with these cases, the man that Lawal claimed was the father was acquitted of an adultery charge due to lack of evidence. Under this legal system, evidence of adultery generally requires testimony in open court from at least three eye witnesses who are also male Muslims.

Sources:

Islamic court delays execution. Glenn McKenzie, Associated Press, June 3, 2002.

Mother faces stoning
. Samson Mulugeta, Bradenton Herald, May 1, 2002.

A sharia appeals court recently overturned the death sentence of Safiya Husaini, 35, who had been ordered stoned to death after being convicted of adultery. Safiya’s case had become a worldwide cause and an embarrassment to Nigeria’s government.

The sharia court ruled that the adultery in question took place before the sharia law had been passed, and so the crime was beyond the court’s jurisdiction.

The issue is not likely to go away, however, even though Nigeria’s justice minister, Godwin Agabi, recently ordered sharia state courts to rewrite their rules to bring them in harmony with Nigeria’s national criminal statutes. But, in fact, just as the decision to throw out Safiya’s conviction was announced, it was revealed that another divorced woman had been sentenced to death after being convicted of adultery by an Islamic court.

Nigeria is deeply divided between Muslims and Christians. The imposition of sharia law in parts of Nigeria have led to riots that have left thousands of people dead.

Muslims have had enough influence to impose sharia courts on 12 of Nigeria’s 36 states. The Nigerian justice minister insisted that it is illegal for sharia courts to impose harsher sentences on Muslims than the national law allowed for.

Nigeria will hold elections in early 2003, however, and the issue of Islamic law will be a major issue in those elections.

Sources:

Woman spared Nigeria stoning death. CNN, March 25, 2002.

Sharia court frees Nigerian woman. The BBC, March 25, 2002.

A woman, Safiya Hussaini, was recently sentenced to death in the Nigerian state of Sokoto — which is one of a growing number of Nigerian states to adopt an Islamic law code. Here crime? She had premarital sex. Not surprisingly, Hussaini alleged sexual partner was acquitted by the same court.

Last year, a teenaged girl in Nigeria was sentenced to 180 lashes for having sex. The sentence was later reduced to a “mere” 100 lashes which were administered in January 2001.

Hussaini appealed her conviction, and it has been temporarily stayed. She claims that the man who was acquitted of having sex with her in fact repeatedly. Under the strict Islamic law in place in Sokoto, since Hussaini was the only witness to the alleged crime, her testimony was essentially meaningless.

Sources:

Woman’s stoning delayed by Sharia Court. European Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, December 4, 2001.