The Spanish section of Amnesty International delivered...

The Spanish section of Amnesty International delivered an additional 310,000 signatures to the Nigerian Embassy in Madrid requesting the acquittal of Amina Nawal, a woman sentenced to death by stoning in the African nation.
The coordinator of AI's Action Program in Spain, Julia Tamayo, delivered the petitions - which now bring the total number of entreaties to almost half a million - to Nigerian Embassy officials, and urged the Spanish people "to continue helping, as you have been doing, to end this type of degrading and inhumane punishment."
Tamayo likewise denounced the plight of Pakistani women who suffer "physical abuse, rape, acid attacks, burns and slayings which have prompted us to call on Pakistani authorities to protect women and take concrete steps to prevent a repetition of situations such as these."
The human rights activist was referring to the case of a Pakistani tribal council that in June ordered the gang-rape of an 18-year-old woman to humiliate her family in retaliation for her 11-year-old brother's "crime" of walking unchaperoned with a girl from a higher caste. Regarding the Nigerian case, Tamayo noted that such sentences "are handed down to the most impoverished of women, such as Amina. Even women who have been raped can be convicted of having extramarital relations and be sentenced to a flogging."
The divorced woman was tried by an Islamic court without benefit of a defence attorney for bearing a child out of wedlock and was sentenced to death by stoning. Tamayo, who was accompanied by several other AI members, said that a Sharia (Islamic law) appellate court, which had previously cancelled two previous hearings, had set a new court date for July 8. The court has consistently refused to examine the appeal.
Tamayo explained that at the July 8 hearing "either the Sharia judge will uphold the sentence or set a new court date, which would constitute the fourth time the sentence is postponed, and a new appeal, this time to a federal court, would be filed."
In Spain alone, the human rights organization has gathered 1.1 million signatures requesting the repeal of laws that permit death by stoning, Tamayo said, adding that the signatures "show that this type of punishment is not accepted by societies such as Spain's."