Amina Lawal back in court
2003-08-26 13:06
Lagos - Nigerian mother-of-three Amina Lawal, who faces death by stoning for adultery, will be back before an Islamic court in northern Nigeria on Wednesday, hoping to launch her delayed second appeal against the sentence.
Lawal, 31, was convicted in May last year after fellow villagers in the northern state of Katsina denounced her as an adulteress when she bore her third child out of wedlock.
She was not the first and is not the latest Nigerian woman to fall foul of the tough stance taken under Islamic law, or Sharia, on extra-marital relations, but her case has become the focus of international protests.
She will come to Katsina State's Sharia Appeal Court to begin her appeal flanked by some of Nigeria's top lawyers, backed by international rights monitors and followed by the world's media.
In the eyes of the world, northern Nigeria's controversial decision to reintroduce Islamic criminal law will be on trial along with the soft-spoken village housewife.
But for Amina's defenders in Nigeria, the key issue is not to challenge the legal system in the west African country but to ensure justice for her personally after a series of heart-rending adjournments.
"We're dealing with it on a case-by-case basis. Every case has its particularities, every case has its facts," said Ezinne Ndidi Ekekwe of the women's rights group Baobab, which supports Amina.
Last year, Lawal's conviction and first, failed appeal overshadowed the success of rights groups and lawyers in the appeal of 34-year-old Safiya Husseini against the same conviction.
Since then, backed by international campaigners and Nigerian women's groups, both Lawal and Husseini have become celebrities, starring on magazine covers and inspiring candlelight vigils around the world.
And Husseini travelled to Rome as a guest of the mayor, being awarded the freedom of the city in a gesture of solidarity.
The cases are an embarrassment for Nigeria's secular federal government and for President Olusegun Obasanjo, who has tried to reassure foreign protesters without offending Nigerian Muslims.
No one has yet been stoned since 12 mainly Muslim northern states seized on the end of military rule in 1999 to begin invoking Islamic law for the first time since independence 37 years earlier.
But some thieves have had their hands amputated, and several others have been sentenced to be stoned for various "sex crimes".
Lawal's appeal has come to be seen by many as a test case, as Nigerian federal officials have said that they can not challenge Sharia unless an individual appeals to the Supreme Court.
Ekekwe rejects the idea that more rides on this week's appeal than the fate of one woman, however. "I don't see what we are testing," she said. "Our focus is just to see that justice is done."
Baobab and Lawal's lawyers argue that her case was mishandled even under Sharia's tough rules.
Obasanjo has said he backs Sharia in principle, for those communities that choose to apply it, but has vowed that federal appeal courts will quash any stoning sentences appealed to them.
He, like the women's campaigners, will be hoping that Katsina State's appeal court will overturn the sentence before the appeals procedure reaches a federal level.
Lawal's lawyers argue that her original trial was unfair, and her conviction based on unreliable testimony.
She was tried by one judge, rather than by a panel of three, as required by law.
Her charge was not properly explained in a language which she could understand, and she was not warned of the fatal consequences of her confession, they say.
Also, they argue, Amina, a divorcee, was already pregnant when Sharia came into effect in Katsina State, meaning that the "adultery" had taken place when secular law still held sway.
Under northern Nigeria's pre-Sharia criminal code adultery attracted only a prison sentence.
Nevertheless, in August last year the first appeal court to hear her case - the Upper Sharia Court in the town of Funtua near her home - upheld Lawal's conviction.
If the Katsina Appeal Court follows suit, her next date will be with a federal, regional appeals court in Kaduna. The case is not expected to conclude on Wednesday, and may be re-adjourned.