The interview is kind of old but it gives the whole background of this case.
CONDEMNED NIGERIAN MUM SPEAKS OUT
EXCLUSIVE: 'Why do they hate me so much? All these men want is to watch me die'
By Anton Antonowicz
_
AMINA Lawal has barely slept the past two nights. She is plagued by a nightmare, grounded in reality, where the Muslim judge repeats the same words: "Take her from here and stone her to death."
"Why? Why?" she asks. "Why is it they hate like this? What have I done which makes me the sinner? Where is the man who made my baby?"
And then, once more: "Why? Why?"
For months, Amina maintained a calm, almost stoic presence while the sentence of death for adultery raged around her. Now that is gone, replaced by those endless questions and tears.
"I never believed it could go on and on like this," she says. "I was sure they would see that I do not deserve to be murdered. But they turn their eyes away every time.
"They want to see a woman die."
She is in hiding. Beside her is Wasila, the eight- month-old daughter who is the focus of her suffering and Exhibit A in a case which has echoed round the world.
And there is Hauwa Ibrahim, the 25-year-old lawyer, herself a woman of Northern Nigeria - like Amina - who is leading the battle to stop a terrible barbarism.
Three females hiding from the evil that men do.
On Monday, an Islamic court in Nigeria upheld the sentence of death by stoning on Amina. She should be taken, buried to the neck in the earth and perish beneath a hail of rocks, half-bricks... anything conveniently to hand.
It said she had been guilty of adultery and that Wasila, the "bastard child" she suckled in that court, was the proof positive needed to condemn her.
The judge rejected the 30-year-old Amina's argument that her conviction for adultery was invalid because, as her lawyers claimed, the child was born before sharia law - the legal writ of Islam - took effect in her area.
His only concession was that the mother should not be executed until she has finished breastfeeding her daughter - which he, with infinite wisdom, declared would not be before January 2004.
The decision was met by cries of "Allahu Akbar" - "God is Greatest" - by the assembled faithful men... and by Amina's tears.
It is a story of oppression by one gender upon another; of two competing codes of law; the claims of sharia to have validity in its northern strongholds; and the age-old tale of politicians more interested in power than justice.
And it rests upon the thin shoulders of Amina, a short woman born to a peasant farmer who died shortly after she was born.
That her last home in Kurani is only five miles from her birthplace gives some indication of this woman's horizons. She cannot read or write, save the recitation of basic Koranic prayers.
SHE is the youngest of 13 children and was married at 14. She has two children from that union, which lasted 12 years.
"After my husband divorced me I went to live with my mother in Kurani," she says, tugging the blue shawl closer round her face. "You see the homes. All the same. Another house made of mud."
Her mother had remarried and Amina stayed with her for a year before agreeing to remarry. "The wedding was a good one, but the marriage did not last." It is an understatement. Ten months after Garba Magajin Aska took Amina as his wife in September 1999, they were divorced.
"I was bleeding continuously. I think it was a dormant pregnancy which did not happen until January this year," she says.
There is little sense in this dubious diagnosis, other than that it supports her claim that Wasila was the fruit of an ordained marriage. She persists: "We were married for 10 months and I became pregnant eight months into our marriage. The pregnancy became dormant and I continued to bleed as a result.
"My husband Garba couldn't bear to pay for the medicine and divorced me."
She remembers the three-roomed home she shared with her mother, her stepfather and her half-brother and his wife. It was the last place in which she lived before the court's decision. She is frightened of returning and trusts to God and her lawyers to do the right thing.
"Anyway, five months after my divorce, Yahay Mohammed, one of my husband's distant nephews, started paying me attention. My family didn't like it but we continued seeing each other for 11 months.
"While he was dating me, my dormant pregnancy began to stir and the baby continued to grow. But I did not tell him.
"When it became evident that his family did not allow him to marry me, he seduced me and had sex with me twice."
When the child was born Amina's stepfather Idris Sani, a 52-year-old farmer and itinerant barber, complained to the village chief, saying Yahay was the father.
Summoned before the tribal elders - who traditionally settle matters before police intervene - Yahay accepted paternity and promised to pay for Amina and her baby.
But he recanted after his family allegedly convinced him that his acceptance would bring shame on them.
A few days later, Amina was arrested and taken before a sharia court in the town of Bakori. Her "informants" were volunteer Islamic guards, known locally as "Hisba".
As a local community worker explains: "This did not go down well with the village chief. He had the responsibility for his village, a place which spanned over two centuries, whose reputation he didn't want smeared."
Amina adds: "At court, I confessed having sex with Yahay twice but the judge never told me the meaning of the charge against me and what my rights really were.
"They just let Yahay go when he swore on oath of the Koran that he didn't have sex with me during those 11 months. Of course he said that to escape punishment.
"When I objected, the judge told me to be silent, saying that the biggest witness against me was the baby I was carrying in my arms.
"Six weeks later, the judge sentenced me to death for adultery."
There is no doubt about evidence. Wasila, cradled in her mother's arms, is all that is needed. Her mother's claims of a dormant pregnancy, lasting from husband to lover, smack of desperation.
But the obvious question remains: why, under what rule, should a woman who may very possibly have conceived out of marriage be condemned to death for doing so? And why, as ever, does the man go unpunished?
Amina does not consider such questions. "God is good. Merciful. Just," she says in the common litany of villagers. "I worry about my parents and the future of Wasila, who may become an orphan."
She relies on financial support from the Nigerian Women's Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative. There is secret backing, in spirit at least, from the national government, which fears a sharia surge moving beyond its northern boundaries. And there is the huge response from human rights groups throughout the world.
"This legal system is being used to punish adult women for consensual sex," says LaShawn R Jefferson, executive director of the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch.
"The death penalty is never an appropriate punishment for a crime, and in this instance the very nature of the crime is in doubt."
As Amnesty International says: "The judgment is incompatible with the Nigerian constitution, with the country's legal obligations under international human rights law and the African Charter for Human and People Rights.
"Stoning to death is the ultimate form of torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, prohibited by both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture."
In other words, Amina's rulers have already signed the documents condemning the punishment she has been handed. As Amnesty says: "This sentence must not be carried out."
Meanwhile, Amina grimaces from the gastric ulcer which has plagued her these past two years. And her young lawyer Hauwa Ibrahim wonders why the hell she has got herself involved when she has two kids of her own, aged five years and 10 months, to look after.
"I'd like to be optimistic and think that eventually the courts will overturn this verdict," Mrs Ibrahim says. "But you shouldn't have to be optimistic for what is so obviously right. Amina should not die. Must not die. And we must fight.
"I know that, if I don't fight now, one day my day will come. Soon, if we don't resist, it will be our turn.
"I was brought up in this region. I was poor, but worked to get to law school and I want to give something back. But when we walked out of that court the other day we were called 'Jews of Islam', 'Betrayers', 'Defilers'.
"That is the level of ignorance we are fighting. And we need help. That is the kind of human being who wishes to stone a woman to death. And that is why we are in hiding.
"These are the kind of people who wish to impose their intolerance upon us. And that is why we shall win."
_
CONDEMNED NIGERIAN MUM SPEAKS OUT
EXCLUSIVE: 'Why do they hate me so much? All these men want is to watch me die'
By Anton Antonowicz
_
AMINA Lawal has barely slept the past two nights. She is plagued by a nightmare, grounded in reality, where the Muslim judge repeats the same words: "Take her from here and stone her to death."
"Why? Why?" she asks. "Why is it they hate like this? What have I done which makes me the sinner? Where is the man who made my baby?"
And then, once more: "Why? Why?"
For months, Amina maintained a calm, almost stoic presence while the sentence of death for adultery raged around her. Now that is gone, replaced by those endless questions and tears.
"I never believed it could go on and on like this," she says. "I was sure they would see that I do not deserve to be murdered. But they turn their eyes away every time.
"They want to see a woman die."
She is in hiding. Beside her is Wasila, the eight- month-old daughter who is the focus of her suffering and Exhibit A in a case which has echoed round the world.
And there is Hauwa Ibrahim, the 25-year-old lawyer, herself a woman of Northern Nigeria - like Amina - who is leading the battle to stop a terrible barbarism.
Three females hiding from the evil that men do.
On Monday, an Islamic court in Nigeria upheld the sentence of death by stoning on Amina. She should be taken, buried to the neck in the earth and perish beneath a hail of rocks, half-bricks... anything conveniently to hand.
It said she had been guilty of adultery and that Wasila, the "bastard child" she suckled in that court, was the proof positive needed to condemn her.
The judge rejected the 30-year-old Amina's argument that her conviction for adultery was invalid because, as her lawyers claimed, the child was born before sharia law - the legal writ of Islam - took effect in her area.
His only concession was that the mother should not be executed until she has finished breastfeeding her daughter - which he, with infinite wisdom, declared would not be before January 2004.
The decision was met by cries of "Allahu Akbar" - "God is Greatest" - by the assembled faithful men... and by Amina's tears.
It is a story of oppression by one gender upon another; of two competing codes of law; the claims of sharia to have validity in its northern strongholds; and the age-old tale of politicians more interested in power than justice.
And it rests upon the thin shoulders of Amina, a short woman born to a peasant farmer who died shortly after she was born.
That her last home in Kurani is only five miles from her birthplace gives some indication of this woman's horizons. She cannot read or write, save the recitation of basic Koranic prayers.
SHE is the youngest of 13 children and was married at 14. She has two children from that union, which lasted 12 years.
"After my husband divorced me I went to live with my mother in Kurani," she says, tugging the blue shawl closer round her face. "You see the homes. All the same. Another house made of mud."
Her mother had remarried and Amina stayed with her for a year before agreeing to remarry. "The wedding was a good one, but the marriage did not last." It is an understatement. Ten months after Garba Magajin Aska took Amina as his wife in September 1999, they were divorced.
"I was bleeding continuously. I think it was a dormant pregnancy which did not happen until January this year," she says.
There is little sense in this dubious diagnosis, other than that it supports her claim that Wasila was the fruit of an ordained marriage. She persists: "We were married for 10 months and I became pregnant eight months into our marriage. The pregnancy became dormant and I continued to bleed as a result.
"My husband Garba couldn't bear to pay for the medicine and divorced me."
She remembers the three-roomed home she shared with her mother, her stepfather and her half-brother and his wife. It was the last place in which she lived before the court's decision. She is frightened of returning and trusts to God and her lawyers to do the right thing.
"Anyway, five months after my divorce, Yahay Mohammed, one of my husband's distant nephews, started paying me attention. My family didn't like it but we continued seeing each other for 11 months.
"While he was dating me, my dormant pregnancy began to stir and the baby continued to grow. But I did not tell him.
"When it became evident that his family did not allow him to marry me, he seduced me and had sex with me twice."
When the child was born Amina's stepfather Idris Sani, a 52-year-old farmer and itinerant barber, complained to the village chief, saying Yahay was the father.
Summoned before the tribal elders - who traditionally settle matters before police intervene - Yahay accepted paternity and promised to pay for Amina and her baby.
But he recanted after his family allegedly convinced him that his acceptance would bring shame on them.
A few days later, Amina was arrested and taken before a sharia court in the town of Bakori. Her "informants" were volunteer Islamic guards, known locally as "Hisba".
As a local community worker explains: "This did not go down well with the village chief. He had the responsibility for his village, a place which spanned over two centuries, whose reputation he didn't want smeared."
Amina adds: "At court, I confessed having sex with Yahay twice but the judge never told me the meaning of the charge against me and what my rights really were.
"They just let Yahay go when he swore on oath of the Koran that he didn't have sex with me during those 11 months. Of course he said that to escape punishment.
"When I objected, the judge told me to be silent, saying that the biggest witness against me was the baby I was carrying in my arms.
"Six weeks later, the judge sentenced me to death for adultery."
There is no doubt about evidence. Wasila, cradled in her mother's arms, is all that is needed. Her mother's claims of a dormant pregnancy, lasting from husband to lover, smack of desperation.
But the obvious question remains: why, under what rule, should a woman who may very possibly have conceived out of marriage be condemned to death for doing so? And why, as ever, does the man go unpunished?
Amina does not consider such questions. "God is good. Merciful. Just," she says in the common litany of villagers. "I worry about my parents and the future of Wasila, who may become an orphan."
She relies on financial support from the Nigerian Women's Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative. There is secret backing, in spirit at least, from the national government, which fears a sharia surge moving beyond its northern boundaries. And there is the huge response from human rights groups throughout the world.
"This legal system is being used to punish adult women for consensual sex," says LaShawn R Jefferson, executive director of the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch.
"The death penalty is never an appropriate punishment for a crime, and in this instance the very nature of the crime is in doubt."
As Amnesty International says: "The judgment is incompatible with the Nigerian constitution, with the country's legal obligations under international human rights law and the African Charter for Human and People Rights.
"Stoning to death is the ultimate form of torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, prohibited by both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture."
In other words, Amina's rulers have already signed the documents condemning the punishment she has been handed. As Amnesty says: "This sentence must not be carried out."
Meanwhile, Amina grimaces from the gastric ulcer which has plagued her these past two years. And her young lawyer Hauwa Ibrahim wonders why the hell she has got herself involved when she has two kids of her own, aged five years and 10 months, to look after.
"I'd like to be optimistic and think that eventually the courts will overturn this verdict," Mrs Ibrahim says. "But you shouldn't have to be optimistic for what is so obviously right. Amina should not die. Must not die. And we must fight.
"I know that, if I don't fight now, one day my day will come. Soon, if we don't resist, it will be our turn.
"I was brought up in this region. I was poor, but worked to get to law school and I want to give something back. But when we walked out of that court the other day we were called 'Jews of Islam', 'Betrayers', 'Defilers'.
"That is the level of ignorance we are fighting. And we need help. That is the kind of human being who wishes to stone a woman to death. And that is why we are in hiding.
"These are the kind of people who wish to impose their intolerance upon us. And that is why we shall win."
_