A Nigerian woman will be able to give birth outside of prison and, along with her former lover, prepare an appeal against a sentence to death by stoning, court officials said on Tuesday.
An Islamic court has freed Fatima Usman and her former sweetheart Ahmadu Ibrahim on bail, a critical step forward for the defence in the latest Sharia law case to raise political and religious tensions in Nigeria.
The couple are still living under a death sentence, but defence counsel Jibril Kallamu was cheered by the result. ”Obviously for us the most important thing was their freedom. Especially for Fatima,” he said.
”She has gone nine months. She could give birth today, tomorrow, or the day after. We’re very, very happy that we’ve secured her freedom.”
Although the New Gawu Upper Court was due to meet on Tuesday to hear the couple’s bail hearing, lawyers and reporters arrived at the court to find the judge had ordered the pair released on Thursday last week.
Ibrahim has returned to his family in their mud-brick house just outside Gawu, a poor rural community in Niger State just an hour’s drive east from Nigeria’s modern federal capital Abuja. Usman has been taken under the wing of the feminist group that is funding her defence and has travelled for medical attention in the state capital Minna, her family and defence team told reporters.
But for the defendants the joy of freedom was immediately tempered by a cruel shock. Neither couple had been told while they were in jail that they had been sentenced to die by stoning.
”A prison guard told me last Thursday, just as I was leaving jail,” Ibrahim told reporters at his home. ”I felt very bad. I am very afraid because this is not over yet.”
The couple plan to appeal their conviction for having sex outside of marriage as soon as possible to the Sharia Appeal Court in Minna, Kallamu said.
Once they do so they will be in the same position as two other Nigerians who have been sentenced to death by stoning this year; 30-year-old single mother Amina Lawal and 54-year-old alleged paedophile rapist Sarimu Mohammed.
Each successive case has raised the temperature of the arguments both inside and outside Nigeria over the reintroduction of the uncompromising law code.
After Nigeria’s return to civilian rule in 1999 a dozen Muslim-majority northern states gradually reintroduced the Sharia into their criminal codes, bringing back sentences such as flogging and amputations.
While Sharia had long formed part of the civil law structure and was a way of life for Nigeria’s Muslim communities, it had not been used for criminal cases since the days of British colonial rule. The return of Sharia was greeted with joy by many Muslims tired of Nigeria’s endemic corruption and violent crime, but also triggered sectarian riots with the north’s Christian minority that left thousands dead.
This year courts began handing down stoning sentences on Muslims caught having sex outside marriage, rekindling the controversy and sparking international condemnation. No-one has yet been stoned, but each fresh case has embarrassed President Olusegun Obasanjo, whose federal government has sought to mollify international opinion without picking a fight with the north’s influential leaders.
His government has said it is opposed to the use of Sharia in criminal cases but has thus far not challenged the northern states in the supreme court nor publicly intervened to help any of the defendants. – Sapa-AFP