shit....I guess it still is a mans world.
. http://news.excite.com/news/r/011203/10/odd-nigeria-dc
Court Puts Woman's Stoning on Hold
LAGOS (Reuters) - A Nigerian sharia court of appeal has ordered a stay of execution for a woman sentenced to be stoned to death for having sex outside of marriage, despite her contention that she was raped, officials said Monday.
The court granted the stay to allow Safiya Hussaini, 33, a divorced mother of five, to appeal her sentence by a lower sharia court in the northwest Sokoto state.
Hussaini said the court had imposed the sentence after she asked it to force a man who she said raped her three times and impregnated her to pay for her infant daughter's naming ceremony.
She said that when she was pressured by her family to charge the man with rape, the court dismissed the charges against him, citing a lack of evidence because she was the sole witness.(remind anyone of a particular religion?) Instead they charged the divorced Hussaini with "adultery" and sentenced her to death in mid-October. She was given 30 days to appeal.
The judgement has sparked international outrage and could lead to a constitutional showdown between the central government, which has threatened to intervene, and regional authorities.
"The judge said the execution should be put on hold until the final determination of the woman's appeal by the higher court," Sokoto state spokesman Nasirdeen Abubakar said by telephone from Sokoto, the state capital.
Officials declined to comment further on the case, saying they did not want to be charged with contempt by the court.
They had said Hussaini was sentenced to death because she was divorced. Had she never been married, the sentence would have been 100 lashes.
The federal government has said it will not allow the sentence to be carried out but officials in Sokoto said the federal government had not contacted them about the sentence.
An appeal does not necessarily guarantee a stay. In January a 16-year accused of having premarital sex was given 100 lashes despite her pending appeal of the sentence. She also said she was raped.
Hussaini is the first person to be sentenced to death since 1999, when regional governments first introduced the strict sharia code in predominantly Muslim parts of northern Nigeria.
The introduction of sharia has been highly controversial in Nigeria, where it has been introduced in more than a third of the 36 states. There were two bouts of riots in the northern Kaduna state over plans to introduce sharia. More than 1000 people died in the first riot in February 2000.
closer