Man Faces Stoning for Child Sex
News 24.com,
December 28, 2004
South Africa
KANO—An Islamic Sharia court in
northern Nigeria has sentenced a man to be stoned to death for sodomising a
10-year-old boy, a court official told AFP on Tuesday.
The conviction of 38-year-old Danliti Rabiu marked the
first time a court in Kano State had resorted to a stoning sentence since it
restored the Islamic legal system in November 2001.
“He reiterated his guilt before the court at three
different sittings and refused to withdraw his confession,” said a court
official from the Upper Sharia Court in Gwarzo, 50km west of Kano city.
“The judge, Mahfuz Mohammed ignored Danliti’s plea
for leniency and passed the death penalty as Sharia orders that once an
accused confesses to such an offence and maintains his guilt there is no
question of leniency,” he said.
The accused will, however, be allowed to appeal the
sentence, he added. He is being held in Kano’s main central prison.
Friday’s court hearing was told that Danliti, a
divorced father-of-two, had been caught having sex with the boy in his house
by neighbours, including the victim’s father, the official said.
A dozen mainly-Muslim states across northern Nigeria have
reintroduced Sharia law since Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999.
More than a dozen people have since been sentenced to be
stoned to death for various sexual offences, including homosexuality and
adultery, but none of the sentences have yet been carried out and several were
thrown out on appeal.
Until Friday’s ruling Kano, the most populous state in
the north, had been regarded as one of the most cautious in its application of
Sharia in criminal cases, and Danliti is the first to face a stoning there.
Scores of drinkers have been flogged, but 11 thieves who
have been sentenced to lose their hands have been held in prison for many
months without their judgements being carried out.
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