Mother accused of sex crime loses appeal to halt death sentence by stoning

AN Islamic high court in northern Nigeria yesterday rejected an appeal by a single mother sentenced to be stoned to death for having sex out of wedlock, but her death was delayed until her baby is weaned in January 2004.

Clutching her daughter, Amina Lawal burst into tears as the judge delivered the ruling. Lawal, 30, was first sentenced in March after giving birth to a daughter more than nine months after divorcing.

“We uphold the judgement from the lower court,” Judge Aliyu Abdullahi said on behalf of four judges at the Islamic high court at Funtua, in Nigeria’s northern Katsina state. Many of the 60 people who packed the small court room shouted “God is great!” in the Hausa dialect, as Lawal wept.

The judge said the sentence would be carried out as soon as Lawal finishes breast-feeding her baby. In June, the court postponed her execution until January 2004 for this reason. Lawal was given 30 days to appeal the ruling and released on bail. Her lawyers said they would take the case to a higher court.

She is the second Nigerian woman condemned to death for having sex out of wedlock since Islamic law, or Shariah, was introduced in a dozen northern states. The first, Safiya Hussaini, had her sentence overturned in March by an Islamic appeals court in the northern city of Sokoto.

President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government has declared Shariah punishments such as beheadings, stonings and amputations unconstitutional.