AN APPEALS COURT HAS ACQUITTED AMINA, SENTENCED TO DEATH BY STONING FOR ADULTERY

The 31-year-old, who was in court with her baby, Wassila, has been appealing the death sentence for two years.
"It is the view of this court that the judgment of the Upper Shariah Court, Funtua, was very wrong and the appeal of Amina Lawal is hereby discharged and acquitted," judge Ibrahim Maiangwa said. Shariah law, based on the teachings in the Quran, Islam´s holy book, is practiced in 12 of Nigeria´s 36 states. Had the court not overturned the verdict, Lawal would still have had two appeals left, one to a Nigerian federal court and a final appeal to Nigeria´s Supreme Court. Neither of those courts is governed by Shariah law.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo had said if Lawal´s case reached the Supreme Court, he would make sure it was overturned. Lawal was convicted and sentenced in March 2002 after giving birth to a baby girl more than nine months after divorcing. Under the strict Shariah law, pregnancy outside marriage constitutes sufficient evidence for a woman to be convicted of adultery. A court stayed her execution for two years to allow her to care for her baby.
"This is all I have to live for right now," Lawal said before the hearing. "My child means everything to me." Lawal lives with her father, his two wives and their numerous children in the tiny village of Kurami, deep in Nigeria´s Islamic north. The village is so small that it does not appear on a map. She insists she did nothing wrong and that the man who fathered her child made a promise to marry her. He did not, leaving her pregnant and with no support. The man said he was not the father, and three male witnesses testified he did not have a sexual relationship with Lawal.
The witnesses constituted adequate corroboration of his story under Shariah law, and he was freed. Lawal is the second woman to be sentenced to death after bearing a child out of marriage since 2000, when more than a dozen states in the predominantly Islamic northern Nigeria adopted strict Islamic Shariah law.

HOC SECRETARY, SERGIO D’ELIA, COMMENTS ON AMINA LAWAL’S CASE AND THE INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE WHICH CRIMINALISED NIGERIA

September 25, 2003: on Amina Lawal’s acquittal, Secretary of Hands Off Cain, Sergio D’Elia declared:
“Amina Lawal was acquitted, according to the judges, due to the conviction being void as she was already pregnant when Islamic law came into effect in her state, as reported by CNN.This sentence shows the political and propagandistic nature of Nigerian Sharia law: an acquittal was preferred in the Islamic state in order to avoid a declaration of unconstitutionality on behalf of the secular Federal Supreme Court. It is an outcome we predicted and are happy about. For more than a year now we have had assurances from President Olusegun Obasanjo, who we met regarding Amina’s case, that as long as he remained President of Nigeria, no stoning would take place in the country. We trusted him and for this reason gave up our efforts to save Amina more than a year ago. We have had to instead witness in these months tenacious demonstrations, on behalf of abolitionist organisations, radio programs and national parliaments, which have resulted in the criminalisation of Nigeria and its President, making it seem in the world’s eyes that the country is one where stonings take place and its president one of many military heads which have governed Nigeria in the past. All this took place whilst Sharia law and stonings were being implemented and carried out in countries such as Iran, and President Khatami was hailed by Europe as a “great reformer”, invited and received in the European capitals as the most welcome of guests.We know that Nigerian Sharia is not the same as Iranian Sharia, it is instead a “political Sharia”, a weapon used by the Northern states against Obasanjo. We knew that Amina was protected at Federal level, not just by the President, but by the Nigerian Constitution, which is tolerant and secular and allows for the study and dissemination of the of the Holy Koran, but not for the practice of Sharia Law, whether it be stonings or other punishments.”