Denial of appeal against stoning sentence sparks international outcry

Monday's decision by an appeal court in northern Nigeria's Katsina State to uphold a death sentence imposed on a woman found guilty of adultery has sparked an international outcry. Human rights organisations called the decision a cruel and inhuman application of Sharia (Islamic) law. "The legal system is being used to punish adult women for consensual sex," said LaShawn Jefferson, executive director of the Women's Rights Division of the Human Rights Watch. "The death penalty is never an appropriate punishment for a crime, and, in this instance, the very nature of the crime is in doubt," Jefferson said in a statement on Tuesday. After the woman, thirty-year-old Amina Lawal, gave birth out of wedlock, a Sharia court sentenced her in March to death by stoning. A man she identified as the father of the baby was discharged for lack of evidence. The execution of her sentence was subsequently postponed by 18 months, by which time Lawal’s eight-month-old baby would have been weaned. Monday's decision conformed the stay of execution. Jefferson urged the Nigerian government to commute Lawal's death sentence, drop the criminal charges against her, abolish the death penalty and end the prosecution of consensual sex between adults. Amnesty International also condemned the ruling. "This judgment is incompatible with the Nigerian constitution and also with Nigeria's legal obligations under international human rights law and the African Charter for Human and People Rights," it said on Monday in a news release. "The practice of stoning to death is the ultimate form of torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment prohibited by both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention against Torture." Amnesty asked Nigeria's government to allow Lawal to enjoy her right of appeal to a higher, impartial, independent tribunal which follows the due process of law. "This sentence must not be carried out," it said. Lawal was the second woman to be sentenced to death by stoning since states in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north began introducing the Islamic legal code in 2000. The first, Safiya Husseini, was sentenced last year in Sokoto State, but that verdict was quashed on 19 March, the same day Lawal received her sentence.