Rapist Goes Free, Victim To Be Executed Under Moslem Law In Nigeria

Voice of America, November 16, 2001

A Nigerian woman convicted by a fundamentalist Islamic court of conceiving a child out of wedlock and sentenced to death-by-stoning says she was raped.

In an interview with VOA Thursday, Safiya Husseini says a man in her village, Yakubu Abubakar, ambushed and raped her the day after she was divorced. It is the first time she has publicly made the allegation.

Husseini is not in custody, but was ordered to appear in court on the day of her execution to allow her to finish nursing her infant daughter. The same fundamentalist Islamic court in the northern state of Sokoto allowed Mr. Abubakar to go free because is said it lacked evidence to convict him.

The pregnant nursing mother has gone into hiding since her conviction last month and her lawyer has filed an appeal.

Meanwhile, Nigeria's Justice Minister Bola Ige says the federal government will not allow the death sentence to be carried out. But Sokoto state officials have said stopping the execution under Sharia law violates the country's constitution.

Mr. Ige made his comments this week in New York, where he was addressing members of the Nigerian Lawyers Association.

Since 1999, strict Sharia law has been imposed in more than a dozen Muslim-majority states in northern Nigeria. As a result, thousands of people have been killed in ethnic and religious violence largely between Christians and Muslims. The West African nation's secular federal government has hesitated to intervene for fear of triggering more clashes.

Meanwhile, outraged human rights groups say Nigeria's fundamentalist courts are waging a war on human rights and are aggravating religious tensions.

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