A Nigerian Islamic court ruled that Amina Lawal, the...

A Nigerian Islamic court ruled that Amina Lawal, the Nigerian woman sentenced to be stoned to death for bearing a child out of wedlock, will begin her latest appeal on March 25.
The village housewife's case has sparked massive controversy both inside and outside Nigeria, and sharpened the already bitter debate over the decision by 12 northern states to reintroduce a hardline version of Islamic Sharia law.
Lawal was first condemned to death on March 22, 2002, by a Sharia court in the remote village of Bakori in Katsina state. The Islamic high court at Funtua rejected her first appeal on August 19, 2002.
At Katsina's Sharia Appeal Court, Lawal sat huddled cuddling her baby daughter Wasila, whose birth caused the 31-year-old divorcee to be denounced in her home village as an adulteress.
After a brief hearing, Katsina State's top Sharia official, Grand Khadi Aminu Ibrahim, adjourned proceedings until March 25.
In doing so, he refused a request by the prosecution to be given six months to prepare its case -- a delay which would have pushed the controversial trial beyond Nigeria's upcoming general and presidential elections, which are set for April.
"Adjournment is unnecessary because my client has been left in suspense for a year without knowing her fate. It is high time she knows her fate, whether she lives or dies," defence lawyer Aliyu Musa Yawuri told the court.
Prosecutor Hamza Kurfi said: "We pray the court to give us up to July to study the records of proceedings, which we got only yesterday, and to allow us to consult with clerics for advice.
"Because a life is at stake, the case should be treated with care," he added. Lawal's defenders are employing a two-pronged defence in which they will say her conviction was unsafe because Sharia's own strict safeguards were ignored and also that applying Sharia in criminal cases is in breach of Nigeria's constitution.