Amina Lawal Kurami: The Nigerian woman who was sentenced to death-by-stoning for giving birth to a child nine months after her divorce

Not so much has been said about a Nigerian woman who was stoned to death for adultery and for conceiving a child out of wedluck.

Her name is Amina Lawal Kurami and was born in 1972.

On March, 23, 2002, an Islamic Sharia court in Bakori, Katsina State, in northern Nigeria sentenced 30-year old Amina Lawal to death by stoning as punishment for having engaged in sex outside marriage and for 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.

The Upper Area Court confirmed the sentence on August 19, 2002. 

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

At the time, the government used her pregnancy as evidence of her having committed adultery.

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.

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

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

At the time, 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 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.

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.

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 then spread to at least twelve other states.

On August 19, 2002, Lawal'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 Lawal'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. Lawal'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.)

The affair exposed civil and religious tensions between the Christian and Muslim regions of Nigeria. The sentence also caused widespread outrage in the West, and a number of campaigns were launched to persuade the Nigerian government to overturn the sentence. Several contestants of the Miss World beauty contest, to be held in Nigeria in 2002, pulled out of the contest to protest against Amina Lawal's treatment. The Oprah Winfrey Show had a special report on Amina Lawal and encouraged viewers to send protest e-mails to the Nigerian Ambassador to the United States - over 1.2 million e-mails ensued.

A 2002 Petition called "save Amina" gathered a few thousand signatures then a 2003 e-communication with the subject line "“Please Stop the International Amina Lawal Protest Letter Campaigns" signed by Ayesha Iman and Sindi Medar-Gould who represented two Nigerian Human Rights organizations said the "save Amina" petition had some inaccuracies including a false assertion that execution of the sentence was imminent. They further contested that "There is an unbecoming arrogance in assuming that international human rights organizations or others always know better than those directly involved, and therefore can take actions that fly in the face of their express wishes".

In May 2003, the official response of the Embassy of Nigeria in the Netherlands to the then Sharia-based trial of the State of Katsina in Nigeria, was that no court had given a stoning order on Lawal.

They claimed the reports were "unfounded and malicious" and were "calculated to ridicule the Nigerian judicial system and the country’s image before the international community." They claimed no knowledge of such a case.

Ambassador A.A. Agada of the Embassy of Nigeria in Washington D.C., U.S., was more forthcoming in recognizing the case of Lawal and stated on 29 August 2003: "the Embassy wishes to inform that Malama Amina Lawal has three levels of courts of appeal before the final determination of her case.

The Embassy hereby assures the general public that Malama Lawal's right to a fair hearing under the Nigerian Constitution is guaranteed. Therefore due appellate processes will be followed to ensure the rule of law"

By Olomoinfo Blog