Nine given death penalty in Nigeria over blasphemy

By Rafiu Ajakaye

LAGOS, Nıgeria

A sharia court in Nigeria's northwestern Kano state has sentenced nine persons to death over blasphemy.

The convicts included a Sufi cleric, Abdul Inyas, and eight others who were arrested in late May after thousands of Muslims marched on Kano streets demanding they be put to death.

Inyas is alleged to uttered remarks denigrating Prophet Muhammad.

Kano State Sharia Court of Appeal confirmed the verdict in a statement. "These nine persons were found guilty under section 110 and section 382b of the Sharia Penal Court law year 2000. They are hereby sentenced to death,” said the statement, issued after what was a secret trial of the suspects.

The secrecy of the trial may have been informed by the tensions the blasphemy case generated in the city of over 9 million people who are mostly Sunni Muslims.

The court statement acknowledged that there was threat of violence if the accused persons were freed.

The ruling is subject to appeal while the process may be faulted in the coming days by civil rights activists who have condemned the secret trial that they insist often deny suspects a fair hearing.

On May 22, a mob numbering over five thousand burnt down a court house in the northwestern Kano city as anger mounted against the Muslim Sufi cleric alleged to have made blasphemous comment against Prophet Muhammad.

The mob comprising mainly youths burnt down the Upper Sharia court where the cleric Abdul Inyas accused of the blasphemy was due to appear.

A day before, angry Muslim youth demolished Inyas's residence located at Gida in Kumbotso local government area.

Nigeria's northern region is notorious for violent protests over alleged blasphemy against the Prophet, including those committed in other countries, often resulting in deaths and mass injuries.

In 2006, at least 15 people -- mostly Christians -- were killed and several others injured across major northern cities in a protest against the publication of insulting cartoons of the Prophet by a Danish newspaper.

In 2008, a 50-year-old Muslim man was beaten to death in Kano for alleged blasphemy.

Last year, a 29-year-old Mubarak Bala, also a Muslim, was beaten by family members and committed to psychiatric hospital for alleged blasphemy and renouncing Islam.