Amina Lawal

Amina Lawal Kurami (born 1972) is a Nigerian woman. On March 22, 2002, an Islamic Sharia court (in Funtua, Nigeria in the northern state of Katsina) sentenced her to death by stoning for adultery and for conceiving a child out of wedlock. The person she identified as the father of the child was not prosecuted for lack of evidence and deemed innocent by the court without any DNA tests.

Amina's conviction sparked an international controversy. It was overturned by a Sharia Court of Appeals which ruled that it violated Islamic law, and she later remarried.

Amina was the second Nigerian woman condemned to death by stoning for engaging in sex before marriage. The first woman, Safiya Hussaini, had her sentence overturned in March 2002 on her first appeal. Sharia law was established in northern Nigeria's mostly Muslim state Zamfara in 2000 and has since spread to at least twelve other states.

On August 19, 2002, Amina's first appeal against the stoning sentence was rejected by an Islamic court in Katsina State of Nigeria. The appeals judge stated that the sentence would be carried out as soon as Kurami weaned her daughter from breast-feeding.

A second appeal was put in motion and on September 25, 2003 Amina's sentence of death by stoning for adultery was overturned by a five-judge panel of Katsina State Sharia Court of Appeal. Four of the five judges ruled that the conviction violated Islamic law on a number of points, which included: the defendant's right to proper legal defense was not ensured; the circumstantial evidence of her pregnancy was not sufficient; the confession of the accused was not valid; and only one instead of the required three judges was present at the time of conviction.

Baobab for Women's Human Rights, an NGO based in Nigeria, took up her case, which was argued by Nigerian lawyers trained in both secular and Sharia law. Amina's lawyers included Hauwa Ibrahim, a prominent human rights lawyer known for her pro bono work for people condemned under Sharia law. In their successful defense of Amina Lawal, lawyers used the notion of "extended pregnancy" (dormant foetus), arguing that under Sharia law, a five-year interval is possible between human conception and birth. (Two years prior to the date of her daughter's birth, she was still married to her husband.)

...
Wikipedia