*Ø* Blogmanac | Nigeria: Amina Lawal's death sentence quashed

News Release from Amnesty International, 25 September

Amnesty International welcomes the decision today by the Sharia Court of Appeal of Katsina State, in northern Nigeria to quash Amina Lawal's sentence to death by stoning handed down by a Sharia court at Bakori, in Katsina State on 22 March 2002.

According to her defence lawyer, Amina Lawal was freed on the grounds that neither the conviction nor the confession were legally valid. Therefore no offence as such was established.

"Amina Lawal's case should not have been brought to a court of law in the first instance. Nobody should ever be made to go through a similar ordeal," Amnesty International said ...

Amina Lawal was found guilty by a Sharia Court in March 2002 after bearing a child outside marriage. Under new Sharia Penal Legislations in force in several northern Nigerian states since 1999, this was sufficient for her to be convicted of the offence of adultery as defined in the new Sharia Penal laws of Katsina state and summoned to appear before a Sharia tribunal to respond to this charge which now carries the mandatory punishment of death by stoning.

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