Nigerian panel of judges frees Amina Lawal

[sisyphusshrugged]

based on a number of grounds which make absolutely no sense at all, but they can't come right out and say that they'll be international pariahs if they carry out their insane Sharia death penalty (death by stoning, mind you, for adultery - her correspondent was not scheduled to die, because despite the existence of DNA testing, the Sharia court took his word for it that he was not the father).

The rest of the world saved Amina Lawal by paying attention.

Imagine if we did it all the time.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Under Islamic law the grounds made perfect sense, unlike the original conviction. To get a conviction for adultery that will result in a stoning, you need to have four adult male witnesses to the act, or you need to have a confession that the accused makes freely and did not retract. That's why the father got off, since he didn't make a confession. Under Islamic law, pregnancies can go on for a long time (when I lived in northern Nigeria, my landlady said she had had a pregnancy that lasted three years), so the fact of pregnancy itself doesn't prove adultery, assuming that the woman has been married within the past five years. What was really shocking about the Amina Lawal and Safiya Hussaini cases was how incompetent they were as verdicts under Islamic law. And in that regard, the international attention was not entirely helpful, since part of what was up was cynical northern Nigerian politicians wanting to shock southern Christians and foreigners perceived as Christian. Think a northern Nigerian version of the Chief Justice of Alabama. The really good work was accomplished by Nigerian organizations like BAOBAB for Women's Human Rights, who have specifically asked the international community to follow their lead.