Nigerian prosecutors said on Thursday they may
seek the death penalty against a 14-year-old girl
accused of murdering her 35-year-old husband by
putting rat poison in his food.
The trial of Wasila Tasi’u, from a poor northern
Nigeria family, has sparked a heated debate on
the role of underage marriage in the conservative
Muslim region, especially whether an adolescent
girl can consent to be a bride.
Prosecutors at the High Court in Gezawa, outside
Nigeria’s second city of Kano, filed an amended
complaint that charged Tasi’u with one count of
murder over the killing of Umar Sani two weeks
after their April wedding in the village of Unguwar
Yansoro.
Lead prosecutor Lamido Abba Soron-Dinki said
that if proved, the charge is “punishable with
death” and indicated the state would seek the
maximum penalty.
Tasi’u entered the court wearing a cream-coloured
hijab and was escorted by two policemen.
Her parents, who have condemned their
daughter’s alleged act, were in the public gallery
— the first time the three were in the same room
since Tasi’u’s arrest in April, her legal
representatives said.
The English-language charge sheet was translated
into Hausa for the accused by the court clerk.
Tasi’u refused to answer when asked if she
understood the charges.
The case was adjourned for 30 minutes so the
charges could be better explained to the
defendant, but when the alleged offences were
read again Tasi’u stayed silent, turned her head to
the wall and broke down in tears.
“The court records (that) she pleads not guilty,”
Judge Mohammed Yahaya said, apparently
regarding her silence as equal to a denial of the
charges and adjourned the case until November
26.
Activists, including in Nigeria’s mainly Christian
south, have called for Tasi’u’s immediate release,
saying she should be rehabilitated as a victim
and noting the prospect that she was raped by
the man she married.
But in the north, Islamic law operates alongside
the secular criminal code, a hybrid system that
has complicated the question of marital consent.
The affected families have denied that Tasi’u was
forced into marriage, arguing that girls across the
impoverished region marry at 14 and that Tasi’u
and Sani followed the traditional system of
courtship.
According to Nigeria’s marriage act, anyone under
21 can marry provided they have parental consent
and so evidence of an agreement between Tasi’u
and her father Tasiu Mohammed could undermine
claims of a forced union.
But defence lawyer Hussaina Aliyu has insisted
the case is not a debate about the role of youth
marriage in a Muslim society.
Instead, she has argued that under criminal law a
14-year-old cannot be charged with murder in a
high court and has demanded that the case be
moved to the juvenile system.
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