Woman sentenced to stoning freed

[MIKE BURN]

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CNN

Thursday, September 25, 2003 Posted: 6:56 AM EDT (1056 GMT)



KATSINA, Nigeria (CNN) -- An appeals court has freed a Nigerian mother sentenced to death by stoning for adultery.



Amina Lawal, 31, was originally sentenced two years ago for having a child out of wedlock but her sentence was delayed until she could wean her baby, Wassila.



Thursday's decision by the Shariah Court of Appeal in Katsina was the fifth appeal for Lawal, a single, illiterate mother of three.



"It is the view of this court that the judgment of the Upper Sharia Court, Funtua, was very wrong and the appeal of Amina Lawal is hereby discharged and acquitted," judge Ibrahim Maiangwa said.



Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo had said that if Lawal's case reached the Supreme Court, he will make sure it is overturned.



Unlike the local court of appeal, the Supreme Court is not based on Shariah, an Islamic code of conduct based loosely on the teachings in the Quran, the Islamic holy book. Shariah is practiced in 12 of Nigeria's 36 states.



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. "My child means everything to me."



Human rights groups around the world had condemned the sentence and drawn attention to her plight. A group of women representing the African National Congress planned to travel to Katsina for Thursday's verdict.



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.



Lawal 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 let free.



Lawal's defense team told CNN that had it not been for the efforts of human rights groups, who sent around mass e-mails about the case and sent representatives to her hearings, their client would have been stoned a long time ago.



Lawal was 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.



In March 2002, an appeals court reversed a similar sentence on Safiya Hussaini Tungar-Tudu after worldwide pleas for clemency and a warning from Obasanjo that Nigeria faced international isolation over the case.



The adoption of Shariah, which includes amputation as a possible punishment for convicted thieves, has stoked violence between Muslims and Christians in Africa's most populous state. More than 3,000 people have been killed.

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[hurtler]

the women must of been really happy to hear the news