Nigerian lovers unaware they will be stoned to death

A Nigerian couple, who were sentenced to death by stoning in August for committing adultery, have not been told of their sentences, their lawyer said today.

Ahmadu Ibrahim, 35, and eight months pregnant Fatima Usman, 32, are being held in a federal jail and were not freed to attend the court hearing in that sentenced, said lawyer Hauwa Ibrahim.

The couple were sentenced under Islamic law, or shariah, which allows amputations for theft or death by stoning for adultery.

Prison officials will only allow family and lawyers to see the couple on the condition that they do not tell them they face the death sentence, Ibrahim said. Officials did not explain why the couple could not be told, she added.

Usman, is being kept in a cramped, unventilated room, her father Umaru Usman said.

“She’s not aware that she’s going to be stoned to death,” he said through a translator.

“She was not looking very good,” said Ibrahim, who saw Usman last week. “For now our concentration is to get them, especially the lady, out.”

A bail hearing for the couple was cancelled today when the judge failed to appear, saying in a message to the court that he was attending a naming ceremony for his new-born daughter.

The Upper Shariah Court in the central town of New Gawu rescheduled the hearing for October 22.

The couple were sentenced a week after another Islamic court rejected single mother Amina Lawal’s appeal of a stoning sentence for having sex outside of marriage.

Lawal’s case provoked an international outcry. Governments and human rights groups around the world have urged President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration to intercede.

The two former lovers were charged and prosecuted by federal police despite Obasanjo’s previous objections to shariah. He has condemned strict shariah punishments as unconstitutional.

The woman’s father, Umaru Usman, played a central role in the former lovers’ predicament.

He first brought their affair to the attention of police when he tried to sue his daughter’s lover for child support after she gave birth to Ibrahim’s child while married to another man, court officials said.

His failed suit triggered a police investigation that led to the couple being sentenced to five years in prison because they couldn’t pay a fine.

His attempts to persuade court officials to reduce the sentence by forcing a review backfired. Shariah court officials ruled that both be stoned to death.

“All I want is a fair hearing,” Usman said. “If this continues... I will lose my daughter, I will lose everything.”

Ibrahim is the first man to be sentenced to death for adultery in Nigeria. Previously only women were prosecuted and their children used as evidence while men escaped punishment because of lack of proof.

Usman was the third Nigerian woman condemned to death under Islamic law for having sex out of wedlock. The first, Safiya Hussaini, had her sentence overturned in March on appeal.

Nigeria is deeply divided about the application of shariah.

Decisions by a dozen states in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north to adopt the Islamic code since 1999 sparked clashes with the region’s Christian minority that have killed thousands.