As the 30 days grace granted to Madam Safiya Husseini, convicted adulteress in Sokoto State, to appeal against the verdict that
condemned her to death by stoning closes in, there are strong indications that the woman might have fled her village for good. But will her escape save her from death by stoning?
Madam Safiya's route to death was charted by some unidentified informants from her village on the 23rd of December, 2000. On that day, the police in Gwadabawa, the headquarters of Gwadabawa Local Government Area, said they received information from 'reliable sources' in Tungar Tudu, the villae the lady hails from, that a 35-year-old divorced woman had been pregnant for eight months outside wedlock. The informants also fingered one Malam Yakubu Abubakar, a married man in the same village, as being responsible for the pregnancy.
The registrar of the Upper Shariah Court at Gwadabawa, Alhaji Mohammed Umar, told Weekly Trust that the police had earlier reported the case to the Lower Shariah Court at Gwadabawa but that because the court has no jurisdictional competence to entertain criminal matters, the case was tranferred to the Upper Sharia Court on the 3rd of July 2001.
The case did not present any complexities for the judge. Both Yakubu and Safiya were summoned to appear before the court and defend themselves.
Safiya had no defence, said the judge. In the Maliki school of
Islamic jurisprudence which guides the adjudication of
Sharia judges in Northern Nigeria, the manifestation of pregnancy is sufficient proof of cuulpability of adultery for women. At the time of her appearance at the court, Safiya had been delivered of a seven-month-old baby of unknown paternity. That was unimpeachable evidence that she was guilty. As for men, only two conditions can make them liable to the punishment of adultery: confession or the testimony of four trustworthy witnesses who must have witnessed the commission of the crime. Yakubu denied responsibility for Safiya's pregnancy, and there were no witnesses to invalidate his avowal of innocence. On the basis of this, the judge, Alhaji Mohammed Bello, sentenced Safiya to death by stoning, and acquitted Yakubu.
A police officer told Weekly Trust at Gwadabawa that it had been fairly obvious to the police and the Shaira court at Gwadabawa that Safiya would run away after the sentence had been passed on her. The source said throughout the period of the trial, the lady had been gripped by terror, and that the first day the judge fixed for ruling had to be postponed because the lady had bolted in terror from the police station at the prospect of the verdict.
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But what is intringing, even curious, about Safiya's escape from the village, according to the villagers, was the fact that before she left the village, members of the Sokoto State Sharia Implementation Committee had visited her family house. It was not clear what the committee discussed with the lady, but people in the village believe that her escape has links with the visit of the Sharia implementation committee. The chairman of the Sokoto State Shariah Implementation Committee, Sheikh Mohammed Mode Abubakar, confirmed to Weekly Trust that members of his committee had visited the family house of the convicted adulteress. He said, however, that it was the Gwadabawa Local Government chapter of the committee, not the state committee which he heads, that visited Safiya's house. He also said he had not yet been fully briefed of the purpose of the visit for him to be in a position to make an informed comment.
Predictably, this position has created grounds for the breeding of speculations and suspicions. Did the committee members plead with her parents to accept the judgment in good faith and thereby deepened her feeling of terror which made her to run away? Or was her escape at the instance of the committee members?
The position of Islamic scholars on this would seem to give credence to the speculation that the lady ran away at the behest of the shariah implementation committee. The judge who sentenced the lady to death by stoning said if somebody convicted of adultery runs away, the law does not coerce them to face the punishment. "If she runs away that is all. Because even the woman that was said to have been stoned during the time of the Prophet (SAW) was the one that told the prophet that she was pregnant, then the prophet asked her to go until she gave birth. She returned to the prophet and the prophet told her to go back and wean the child. It was after she returned to the prophet without the child that the prophet ordered that the woman be stoned to death. Had it been that she did not return, she wouldn't have been stoned to death. Therefore, if Safiya runs away, fine," he said.
Mallam Muhammad Bello Uthman, a lecturer of Islamic law and doctoral research student in Islamic Criminal Law at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, agreed. He said any adulterer or adulteress who is convicted on the basis of confession will be left off if they run away. According to him, the doctrinal basis for this position is that before a case of adultery can be established on anybody, not even the minutest strand of uncertainty or doubt should exist. "This was why when it was reported to the prophet that Maiz Al-Aslami had attempted to run away when he felt the impact of stones, the prophet (PBUH) said, why didn't you bring him back to me? He could have repented and Allah would have accepted his repentance."
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The 80-year-old father of Safiya, Mallam Husseini Tungar Tudu who is hard of hearing and partially blind, would not disclose to Weekly Trust what the purpose of the visit of the Sharia implementation committee was. But he said he did not accept the judgement of the Upper Sharia Court. "There was no justice in this judgement as far as I am concerned. I don't want my daughter to die by stoning. The judges should please be just. Only Allah can judge everybody," he said. When he was reminded that the punishment passed on his daughter was in conformity with the provisions of the Qur'an and the traditions of the prophet of Islam, the old man murmured astagfirullah (an Arabic phrase meaning God should forgive me). But he still insisted that "Allah is forgiving, and my daughter should be forgiven."
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