Comunit� di Sant'Egidio

Comunit� di Sant'Egidio

English

25/09/2003
AMINA LAWAL ASSOLTA.
SODDISFAZIONE DELLA COMUNITA' DI SANT'EGIDIO.
LA CAMPAGNA PER L'ABOLIZIONE DELLA PENA DI MORTE CONTINUA

La donna era stata condannata in base alla legge islamica
per aver avuto una figlia fuori dal matrimonio.

Nigeria, Amina vince l'appello non sar� lapidata per adulterio

KATSINA - Amina � salva. La donna nigeriana, condannata alla lapidazione perch� colpevole di adulterio, � stata assolta oggi dalla corte d'appello islamica di Katsina.

Amina Lawal, 31 anni, analfabeta e disoccupata, dopo il divorzio dall'uomo che le aveva dato due figli, aveva avuto rapporti con un altro uomo che aveva promesso di sposarla, l'aveva messa incinta, e poi non aveva mantenuto la promessa. Nel marzo del 2002, la donna era stata giudicata colpevole per aver concepito la figlia Wasila al di fuori del matrimonio. E in base alla Sharia, la legge islamica, introdotta in Nigeria nel 1999 e in vigore in alcuni Stati del nord del paese, il tribunale islamico di Bakori l'aveva condannata alla lapidazione. La condanna era stata confermata un anno fa anche da un altro tribunale.

Amina aveva poi presentato ricorso alla Corte d'Appello. Ma l'udienza era stata rimandata tre volte e tali rinvii avevano dato vigore al movimento internazionale che rivendicava l'assoluzione della donna. Migliaia di lettere ed e-mail avevano tempestato le autorit� nigeriane, come era avvenuto per Safiya - la donna protagonista di un caso simile e poi graziata.

Fin dalle prime ore del mattino, la corte d'appello � stata circondata da una trentina di poliziotti armati e presa d'assedio dai giornalisti e da un gruppo di attivisti impegnati nella difesa dei diritti umani, che hanno atteso pazientemente l'arrivo della condannata.
Amina si � presentata Con il capo coperto dal tradizionale velo islamico, tenendo Wasila, la figlioletta della "colpa" con una mano e Aliyu Musa Yawuri, l'avvocato, con l'altra .

Il verdetto di oggi ha dato ragione al presidente nigeriano Olusegun Obasanjo (che � cristiano) che aveva assicurato che "Amina non sarebbe mai stata giustiziata". I legali hanno argomentato l'appello sostenendo che la Sharia non � applicabile in questo caso perch� Amina ha commesso il "crimine" prima che la legge islamica venisse introdotta nello stato di Katsina.

I cinque componenti del tribunale si sono espressi a maggioranza per la revoca della condanna inflitta all'imputata, madre di quattro figli. Nella sentenza, letta dal presidente Ibrahim Maiangwa, viene sottolineato che la Corte d'Appello ha giudicato "assolutamente sbagliata" la decisione dell'Alta Corte della Sharia.

Se la condanna fosse stata definitiva, Amina sarebbe stata la prima persona a essere lapidata dal 2000, quando la Sharia � stata introdotta in 12 Stati a maggioranza musulmana del nord della Nigeria. In base a questa legge, perch� un uomo sia condannato per adulterio occorrono almeno quattro testimonianze oculari. Ma per una donna una gravidanza fuori del matrimonio � considerata una prova sufficiente.

Subito dopo la notizia dell'assoluzione di Amina � stata resa pubblica la condanna a morte, emessa marted�, di Jibrin Babaji, 20 anni, riconosciuto colpevole di rapporti sessuali con tre ragazzi.

 KATSINA (NIGERIA), 25 SET - Amina Lawal aveva presentato ricorso alla Corte d'Appello contro la sentenza, rilasciata in prima istanza, del tribunale islamico di Bakori che l'ha condannata a morte, tramite lapidazione, per adulterio nel marzo del 2002.

Con il capo coperto dal tradizionale velo islamico - tenendo Wasila, la figlioletta della 'colpa' con una mano e Aliyu Musa Yawuri, l'avvocato, con l'altra - Amina si era presentata cosi', questa mattina, nell'aula del tribunale.

La corte, fin dalle prime ore del mattino, era stata circondata da una trentina di poliziotti armati e presa d'assedio dai giornalisti e da un gruppo di attivisti impegnati nella difesa dei diritti umani che hanno atteso pazientemente l'arrivo della condannata.

Amina, donna di campagna di 31 anni analfabeta e disoccupata, dopo il divorzio dall'uomo che le aveva dato due figli, aveva avuto rapporti con un altro uomo che aveva promesso di sposarla, l'aveva messa incinta, e poi non aveva mantenuto la promessa.

L'udienza di appello era stata rimandata tre volte e tali rinvii hanno dato vigore al movimento internazionale che rivendicava l'assoluzione della donna.

Migliaia di lettere ed e-mail hanno tempestato le autorita' nigeriane, come era avvenuto per Safiya - la donna protagonista di un caso simile e poi graziata.

Il verdetto di oggi ha dato ragione al presidente nigeriano Olusegun Obasanjo (che e' cristiano) che aveva assicurato che ''Amina non sarebbe mai stata giustiziata''.

Se la condanna fosse stata definitiva, Amina Lawal sarebbe stata la prima persona a essere lapidata dall'introduzione della sharia (legge islamica) nel 2000 in 12 Stati a maggioranza musulmana del nord della Nigeria.

In base alla sharia, perche' un uomo sia condannato per adulterio occorrono almeno quattro testimonianze oculari, ma per una donna una gravidanza fuori del matrimonio e' considerata di per se' una prova sufficiente.

Nigerian spared death by stoning

A northern Nigerian woman sentenced to death by stoning for committing adultery has won her appeal against the verdict on a majority decision.

Four out of five judges rejected her conviction, saying she was not given "ample opportunity to defend herself".

Thirty-one-year-old Amina Lawal was convicted last year in Katsina state.

She had been found guilty under the Sharia (Islamic criminal law) which has been introduced into 12 northern states over the last three years.

The verdict, which had been expected says the BBC's Anna Borzello in Katsina, was read out to a packed courtroom in the appeal court in the northern town of Katsina.

The panel of judges said the decision to acquit Ms Lawal was based on procedural errors at her original trial and the fact that her adultery was not proved beyond doubt.

Ms Lawal sat throughout the verdict in the corner of the courtroom, her face hidden by a shawl and her child on her lap.

A village woman, she had been convicted of adultery in March last year soon after giving birth to her daughter, Wasila.

This was the second time she had appealed against her sentence of death by stoning, with the help of two Nigeria women's rights groups which took up her case.

While Thursday's ruling means Ms Lawal can go home a free woman, the issue of Sharia and in particular Sharia punishments like flogging for fornication and amputation for theft has not gone away, our correspondent says.

Shortly after the verdict, reports were coming in of a Nigerian man being sentenced to death by stoning for sodomy after he allegedly slept with three boys in the northern Bauchi state.

The introduction of Sharia punishment has been highly controversial, provoking international concern abroad and sparking religious violence within Nigeria.

Woman sentenced to stoning freed

From Jeff Koinange
CNN
Thursday, September 25, 2003 Posted: 1353 GMT ( 9:53 PM HKT)
KATSINA, Nigeria (CNN) -- An appeals court has freed a Nigerian mother sentenced to death by stoning for adultery.

The Shariah Court of Appeal ruled on Thursday that Amina Lawal's conviction was invalid because she was already pregnant when harsh Islamic Shariah law was implemented in her home province.

After the hearing, she told CNN, "I am happy. God is great and he has made this possible. All I want is to go home, get married and live a normal life."

The 31-year-old, who was in court with her baby, Wassila, has been appealing the death sentence for two years.

"It is the view of this court that the judgment of the Upper Shariah Court, Funtua, was very wrong and the appeal of Amina Lawal is hereby discharged and acquitted," judge Ibrahim Maiangwa said.

Shariah law, based on the teachings in the Quran, Islam's holy book, is practiced in 12 of Nigeria's 36 states.

Lawal's case had become the focus of human rights groups around the world who were outraged at the sentence that Lawal should be buried up to her neck and then have stones thrown at her head until she was dead.

Lawal's lawyer, Hauwa Ibrahim, said: "This a great victory for justice. The law of justice has prevailed over the law of man. Amina is free to go, to do what she wants."

But not all the spectators who attended the hearing were pleased by the result. One man who had come to hear to court's ruling said: "I would have preferred Amina to be stoned to death. She deserves it."

Had the court not overturned the verdict, Lawal would still have had two appeals left, one to a Nigerian federal court and a final appeal to Nigeria's Supreme Court. Neither of those courts is governed by Shariah law.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo had said if Lawal's case reached the Supreme Court, he would make sure it was overturned.

Lawal was convicted and sentenced in March 2002 after giving birth to a baby girl more than nine months after divorcing. Under the strict Shariah law, pregnancy outside marriage constitutes sufficient evidence for a woman to be convicted of adultery.

A court stayed her execution for two years to allow her to care for her baby.

"This is all I have to live for right now," Lawal said before the hearing. "My child means everything to me."

Lawal lives with her father, his two wives and their numerous children in the tiny village of Kurami, deep in Nigeria's Islamic north. The village is so small that it does not appear on a map.

She insists she did nothing wrong and that the man who fathered her child made a promise to marry her. He did not, leaving her pregnant and with no support.

The man said he was not the father, and three male witnesses testified he did not have a sexual relationship with Lawal. The witnesses constituted adequate corroboration of his story under Shariah law, and he was freed.

Lawal is the second woman to be sentenced to death after bearing a child out of marriage since 2000, when more than a dozen states in the predominantly Islamic northern Nigeria adopted strict Islamic Shariah law.

In March 2002, an appeals court reversed a similar sentence on Safiya Hussaini Tungar-Tudu after worldwide pleas for clemency and a warning from Obasanjo that Nigeria faced international isolation over the case.

The adoption of Shariah, which includes amputation as a possible punishment for convicted thieves, has stoked violence between Muslims and Christians in Africa's most populous state. More than 3,000 people have been killed.

Nigerian Islamic court clears Amina Lawal of adultery in stoning case

KATSINA, Nigeria  - Nigerian single mother Amina Lawal was cleared of adultery by an Islamic court, releasing her from a sentence that she be stoned to death.

Lawal's supporters hailed the majority ruling, which split a panel of Katsina State's top Islamic lawyers four to one, as a vital step forward in ensuring the legal rights of Nigeria's more than 60 million Muslims.

"It's a victory for law, it's a victory for justice. Today we are celebrating the victory of law over the rule of man," said Lawal's friend and lawyer, Hauwa Ibrahim.

"Amina is free. Amina has been discharged. Amina can have her life back," she told reporters outside the court, as Lawal and her baby daughter Wasila were whisked away in a police vehicle with a heavily armed escort.

Lawal, a 31-year-old old village housewife, was last year convicted of adultery under the strict Sharia legal code, and faced becoming the first person to be stoned to death since its controversial reintroduction in Nigeria, mainly in the northern, predominantly Muslim states.

She appeared before Katsina Sharia Appeal Court in a peach-coloured embroidered veil, cradling Wasila, who has grown a thick head of curls since making her first public appearance at her mother's trial in March last year, when she was only a few months old.

Since then, photographs of mother and child sitting meekly in front of panels of robed judges have flashed around the world, and the case has become the centre of an international dispute over Sharia's harsh punishments.

Legal rights campaigners said that her acquittal was a step forward, but that it must be seen as a first step in ensuring that due process be followed in future Sharia cases.

"Amina's struggle is the struggle of one person, one highly mediatised combat. But there are other such struggles around this country," said Catherine-Danielle Mabille of the French-based group Doctors Without Borders.

Even as the Katsina court was sitting, in a small one-storey courtroom painted in Sharia's traditional sky-blue, officials in nearby Bauchi State announced that a young man had been sentenced to be stoned to death for sodomy.

Ibrahim told reporters that she hoped that Lawal's victory would serve as a useful but non-binding precedent that could be cited in appeal cases in other states. Each of Nigeria's 36 states has an independent judicial system.

The court ruled that Lawal should have been allowed to retract her alleged original "confession", which was taken by a village court after fundamentalist vigilantes raided her home at night shortly after Wasila's birth.

Any defendant has the right to withdraw a confession, which should be made at least four times before a panel of judges, rather than just once before one judge as in Lawal's case, judge Ibrahim Mai-Ungawa said.

Nigeria's federal police should not have pressed charges in the case, he added, unless they had four witnesses to the alleged adultery.

"I'm very happy with the ruling," said Ibrahim.

Katsina State prosecutors said after the hearing that they had three months to decide whether to appeal the verdict to a federal court.

Since Nigeria's return to civilian rule in 1999, a dozen northern states have begun to reintroduce Sharia law into their penal codes, despite opposition from the federal government and the region's Christian minority. One state in the south, Oyo, has also reintroduced the strict legal code.

One murderer has been executed under the code and at least 15 people have been charged with adultery, a crime which carries the death penalty. Dozens of thieves have been jailed and are awaiting the amputation of their hands.

Three alleged adulterers had already been cleared when Lawal came to court, but several more -- including a young couple of former lovers -- are awaiting trial or appeal hearings.

Sharia bans adultery, fornication, stealing, gambling, drunkenness and dancing in public, among other acts.

Lawal's acquittal will come as a great relief to President Olusegun Obasanjo's secular federal government, which has been embarrassed by the international outcry over the young mother's treatment.

The Christian president has so far refused to challenge Sharia in the Supreme Court, despite claims that it is unconstitutional, for fear of offending Muslims, half the population of Africa's most populous country.

Nigerian Islamic court clears Amina Lawal of adultery

KATSINA, Nigeria  - A Nigerian Islamic appeal court cleared single mother Amina Lawal of adultery, for which she had been sentenced to be stoned to death.

In a split verdict a panel of five judges at the Sharia Appeal Court in the northern city of Katsina, found in favour of the 31-year-old mother of four at her second bid to get the sentence lifted.

Bild vergr��ern 

Katsina/Nigeria (AP) Die in Nigeria zum Tod durch Steinigung verurteilte Amina Lawal ist am Donnerstag in einem Berufungsprozess freigesprochen worden. Ein Gremium von f�nf islamischen Richtern hob das Urteil vom M�rz vergangenen Jahres mit der Begr�ndung auf, im Prozess habe es Verfahrensfehler gegeben und Lawal habe nicht ausreichend Gelegenheit gehabt, sich zu verteidigen.

Nach mehrst�ndiger Beratung entschieden die Richter mit einer Gegenstimme, das Urteil zu verwerfen. Lawal habe nicht gen�gend Zeit gehabt, die gegen sie erhobenen Anschuldigungen zu verstehen, zudem sei w�hrend der Verhandlung nur einer statt der nach islamischem Recht erforderlichen drei Richter anwesend gewesen, hie� es in dem Beschluss. Au�erdem sei Lawal nicht w�hrend des angeblichen Ehebruchs ertappt worden. Die Staatsanwaltschaft erkl�rte, sie akzeptiere die Entscheidung. Innerhalb von 30 Tagen kann gegen den Beschluss jedoch noch Berufung eingelegt werden.

Lawal wurde vor eineinhalb Jahren zum Tod verurteilt, Anzeige

weil sie als geschiedene Frau ein nichteheliches Kind zur Welt gebracht hatte. Sie wurde nach dem islamischen Gesetz, der Scharia, des Ehebruchs f�r schuldig befunden, obwohl die Scheidung bei der Geburt ihrer Tochter bereits zwei Jahre zur�cklag. Das Urteil sollte Anfang kommenden Jahres vollstreckt werden, sobald das Kind abgestillt ist. Der mutma�liche Vater des Kindes bestritt seine Verantwortung und wurde freigesprochen.

Lawals Anw�ltin, Hauwa Ibrahim, begr��te den Freispruch als Sieg f�r Gerechtigkeit W�rde und grundlegende Menschenrechte. Fran�ois Cantier von der franz�sischen Vereinigung Anw�lte ohne Grenzen, der die Verteidigung unterst�tzte, erkl�rte, die Todesstrafe f�r Ehebruch widerspreche der nigerianischen Verfassung und internationalen Vereinbarungen gegen Folter. Ein weiterer Anwalt Lawals hatte angek�ndigt, bis vor den Obersten Gerichtshof Nigerias zu ziehen, sollte die allein erziehende Mutter nicht freigesprochen werden.

Menschenrechtsgruppen und die nigerianischen Regierung hatten wiederholt gefordert, das Steinigungsurteil au�er Kraft zu setzen. Vergangene Woche bot Brasilien der Mutter und ihrer knapp zweij�hrigen Tochter Asyl an. Die Menschenrechtsorganisation Amnesty International (AI) begr��te den Freispruch, kritisierte jedoch, dass in einigen Staaten Nigerias immer h�ufiger grausame Strafen wie Steinigung, Auspeitschungen und Amputationen verh�ngt w�rden. Die Gesellschaft f�r bedrohte V�lker (GfbV) erkl�rte, nur eine Abschaffung der Scharia werde Steinigungen dauerhaft verhindern.

Im August 2002 wurde ein erster Berufungsantrag Lawals von einem Gericht im n�rdlichen Staat Katsina abgelehnt. Sie w�re die erste Frau gewesen, die seit Einf�hrung der Scharia in zw�lf n�rdlichen Staaten Nigerias vor vier Jahren zu Tode gesteinigt wird. Zwei andere Todesurteile wurden wieder aufgehoben, zwei weitere Prozesse laufen noch.