LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) -- When her time to die comes, convicted
adulteress Amina Lawal will be buried up to her neck in sand. When
only her head remains exposed, those watching will be invited to
throw stones until the 30-year-old single mother is dead.
"As they throw, they will be calling 'God is great," court
official Ibrahim Abdullahi says, outlining procedure for the first
in a sudden string of executions by stoning in Nigeria's Islamic
northern states.
Lawal and others of a growing number of men and women on
Nigeria's Shariah death row have emerged as pawns in a political
battle for power in Nigeria -- one that high-ranking civil and
religious figures feel has gotten out of control.
The rush in Nigeria's north to impose the harshest possible
sentences under Islamic law -- newly adopted by a dozen states -- has
laid bare the split between Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north and
predominantly Christian south.
The death sentences have become an act of defiance by
northern leaders against President Olusegun Obasanjo, whom they
accuse of neglect, and against the south as a whole, where Nigeria's
economic power lies.
Southerners accuse the rulers of the mainly Muslim north of
manipulating Islam to divide voters along religious lines -- and to
distract the people from their state governments' poor performance
since military rule ended in Nigeria three years ago.
On Aug. 22, a Shariah appeal court upheld Lawal's death by
stoning sentence for having sex outside of marriage. She gave birth
more than nine months after divorcing. The father was dismissed for
lack of evidence.
The court postponed her execution to 2004 so she can wean
her daughter. But with each day Wasila grows older, Lawal's life
grows shorter.
Clutching Wasila, Lawal broke down in tears as a judge
announced to a cheering courtroom that the death sentence stood.
Outside the court, she clung to her lawyer -- terrified under the
misapprehension that the sentence was to be carried out on the spot.
"She knew if she stayed close to me they wouldn't stone
her," her lawyer, Hauwa Ibrahim, explained.
Lawal remains in hiding, out of her lawyers' fear that
someone might try to execute the judgment before her next appeal is
considered Sept. 25.
Abdullahi said if Lawal is stoned, authorities will make
sure it is a spectacle. "They will find a place that is open. So
people can come and see it done. So others can see what she has
done," he said.
In the past month, four people in northern Nigeria have
filed appeals against stoning death sentences: Lawal, a man
convicted of raping a 9-year-old girl and a couple sentenced for
adultery. But no one has been stoned to death yet in Nigeria.
Lawal's case provoked an international outcry. Government
and human rights groups around the world have urged Obasanjo's
government to intercede. The president has said he doesn't believe
the sentence will be carried out -- but will weep for Lawal if it is.
Attorney General Kanu Agabi says government lawyers will
assist with Lawal's appeal, but less than two weeks before her next
court date, her lawyers say they have not been contacted by his
ministry. Obasanjo's government has made no open move to block the
sentence.
The European Parliament's women's rights committee has
called for a boycott of the Miss World pageant set for Nov. 30 in
Nigeria's capital, Abuja. France and Belgium have already said they
are withdrawing their pageant contestants.
But northern state governments say international protests
will not make them overturn the death sentences -- because they are
only accountable to God.
"The Muslim has the Quran as his first constitution," said
Usman Zakari Dutse, the government spokesman for Jigawa state, where
the child rapist has been sentenced to death by stoning. "We don't
care what international organizations say."
Worldwide, however, few Islamic countries still practice
stoning -- even if it remains on the books. Two people were stoned to
death in Iran last year. A man was stoned for raping and killing his
daughter in 2000 in Yemen. In Afghanistan, under the Taliban,
adulterous couples were often killed together.
Massoud Shadjareh, head of the London-based Islamic Human
Rights Commission, is urging Muslim intellectuals to speak out
against the stoning sentences to prevent what he calls an inhumane
brand of Islamic law from taking root in Nigeria.
"Shariah has been translated to be harsh, extreme treatment
-- it isn't," he said.
Amputations and stonings are supposed to be a last resort
for Islamic societies that have eradicated poverty and corruption,
Shadjareh argued -- citing two conditions that are far from being met
in Nigeria, on the edge of the Sahara Desert.
Even Shariah officials in Lawal's state have expressed
doubts about whether the state is executing Islamic law correctly.
"Under normal circumstances they are not supposed to do
that. Adultery is not an offense against the state," said Dalhat S.
Abubakar, chief registrar for the Katsina Shariah Court of Appeal.
However, Abdullahi, the court's spokesman, said the state
has no intention of abandoning its case against the single mother.
Many see the Shariah courts' activism as part of attempts to
discredit Obasanjo, and to secure Muslim voters' loyalty ahead of
next year's general elections.
And many in Nigeria's predominantly Christian south blame
Obasanjo for not telling Shariah courts three years ago that
amputations and stonings were illegal under the federal
constitution.
"Obasanjo thought it would just fizzle out," said Innocent
Chukwuma, director of the Lagos-based Center for Law Enforcement
Education. "He is in a difficult position now where intervening will
look like he's clamping down on the north."
Even one top northern official who publicly embraces
Shariah, privately says most Northern government officials are
against it but had to adopt Shariah for their own political
survival.
"Shariah was being kept sacred. It was like a nuclear bomb,"
the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "Once the
bomb went off, everyone was pressured to bring in Shariah."
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