DATE=3/26/02

TYPE=INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

TITLE=ALONZO / GOLDMAN

NUMBER=3-104

BYLINE=FRANCES ALONZO

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

INTERNET=

Host: An Islamic court in northern Nigeria has struck down a death sentence by stoning ordered for a woman found guilty of adultery.

Monday's reversal came from an appeals panel in the northern city, Sokoto, which ordered the accused, Safiya Husaini, freed immediately. The ruling overturned the death sentence on technical grounds.

The case had drawn international outrage and raised concerns about the state of human rights in Nigeria.

Robert Goldman is Co-Director of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at American University. He spoke with VOA's Frances Alonzo on the significance of the ruling.

MR. GOLDMAN: I think the importance of the case is that it showed mobilization of world opinion. I think clearly, had perhaps this not been picked up by human rights groups, and specifically women's groups, the woman might very well have suffered that particular form of dying. So at least it indicates that, in Nigeria, there is attention paid to world opinion.

You can contrast that, for instance, with Afghanistan under the Taleban, when the whole world, including the Muslim world, objected, for instance, to forms of punishment, exclusion of women and so forth from school and walking on the streets unveiled, or even the destruction of such historical monuments as those of the Buddhists in Bamiyan.

And from the perspective of the West, the case of this particular woman, the penalty for adultery, while it may be a criminal penalty, the death penalty would have been a disproportionate response. And certainly the use of stoning would have constituted a form of cruel and degrading punishment, if not torture, in its application.

How we view things in the West and in many other parts of the world is obviously at variance with the way these things are being interpreted in certain areas of the world. Now, Nigeria obviously was under a lot of international attention and pressure. And I would suspect that that is the principal reason why that particular penalty itself was struck down.

MS. ALONZO: Now, Mr. Goldman, with respect to the future of Sharia law, can Sharia law now coexist with the international standards of human rights?

MR. GOLDMAN: I think it is possible. The problem is when you get extreme interpretations. Then, inevitably, there is going to be a problem. There has been a good deal, obviously, in op eds (opinion articles) written all over the West, articles and books, in terms of Islam and the like, distortion, because of bin Laden and others who have given an image of Islam as somehow being fanatical. You go and you steal, you get your hand cut off. You do it again, you get your foot cut off. You can be stoned to death or there can be some other form of mutilation as a punishment and so forth. That I think most people in the human rights community, both in the West and outside of the West, would say is incompatible with that state's human rights obligations.

MS. ALONZO: What about future cases like this in Nigeria, will the courts follow it? How much of a precedent does this case present?

MR. GOLDMAN: I think it was done by a religious court, so I'm not sure. What does bode well is, quite clearly, those who had to judge one way or another, quite clearly became aware of the tremendous outcry internationally as to the sentence that was going to be imposed on this woman.

That is Robert Goldman of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at American University. He spoke with VOA's Frances Alonzo. Monday's ruling in Sokoto coincided with news that another Sharia court in another Nigerian state has sentenced a woman to be stoned to death, also for adultery.

Vnn/wh/MEM