Safiya Hussaini won a temporary reprieve from death...

Safiya Hussaini won a temporary reprieve from death by stoning for adultery under Islamic sharia law. Hussaini, 35, who was sentenced in a Nigerian court in October 2001, claimed her baby Adama was fathered by her former husband, not the married man who, she says, raped her. If that can be proved, she could be acquitted, since having a husband's child after divorce is not an offence under sharia law.
If she becomes the first Nigerian executed for adultery, the case could be as damaging to democratic Nigeria as the hanging of the writer and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa was to the country's former dictators. Although Nigeria has inflicted harsh sharia punishments, including amputations of hands and feet for theft, and hanging a man for the murder of a woman and her two children, nobody has yet been stoned to death.