Author:
Publication: BBC News
Date: December 3, 2001
A court in northern Nigeria has
ordered a stay of execution to a woman sentenced to be stoned to death
despite saying she was raped.
The woman, Safiyatu Husaini, was
convicted of adultery by a court in the north-western state of Sokoto after
she had gone to court seeking an order that a 60-year-old man pay for her
daughter's naming ceremony.
She says that he raped her but there
were no other witnesses and she became the first person to be sentenced
to death since Sharia was introduced in states across northern Nigeria
in the past two years.
Appeals do not automatically stop
sentences being carried out under Nigeria's Sharia Islamic law.
Reuters news agency quotes state
officials as saying that the 35-year-old Ms Husaini, was given a death
sentence because she was divorced.
If she had never been married, the
sentence would have been 100 lashes.
Four witnesses
While she was sentenced to death,
Judge Alhaji Muhammad Bello Sanyinlawal acquitted Yahaya Abubakar, accused
of impregnating her.
Mr Abubakar, who is her cousin,
is said to have admitted to police that he had sex with her three times.
But the judge dismissed the testimony
of the three policemen who heard his confession because, under Sharia law,
four witnesses are required in a case of this nature.
The sentence had been due to be
carried out after Ms Husaini had weaned the baby girl that resulted from
the affair.
Tensions
More than a third of Nigeria's 36
states, in the predominantly Muslim north of the country, have adopted
Sharia law in the past two years.
A teenage mother Bariya Ibrahim
Magazu was given 80 lashes early this year for committing adultery in neighbouring
Zamfara, the first state to fully implement Sharia.
An elderly man was also sentenced
to death by stoning for sodomy with a minor in Kebbi state, but that sentence
is yet to be carried out.
Two people found guilty of theft
have had their hands cut off in Zamfara and Sokoto states.
The introduction of Sharia has inflamed
tensions between Christians and Muslims across Nigeria.
Communal clashes have led to thousands
of deaths.
