Kano - A Nigerian Islamic court has sentenced a peasant farmer to death by stoning for having sex with his 15-year-old stepdaughter, a government spokesperson told AFP on Tuesday.
The Upper Sharia Court in the Alkalere district of the northern state of Bauchi on Monday sentenced 45-year-old Umar Tori to death for incest, Bauchi state spokesperson Mohammed Abdullahi said.
The presiding judge, Hashimu Husseini Dass, also sentenced the girl to 100 lashes with a whip despite her claim that she had been raped, he said.
Both defendants have been given 30 days to appeal the verdicts.
Northern Nigeria began reintroducing a strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law in 1999 after the end of military rule, but its implementation has been piecemeal and so far no defendant has been stoned to death.
Around a dozen men and women convicted of various sexual offences - such as adultery, rape, incest and sodomy - are awaiting news of their appeals across the Muslim-majority north of the country.
The court heard that Tori had married the the girl's mother after the death of her father 13 years ago and that the family had lived together in the village of Tshohuwar Gwaram.
In September last year the teenager was discovered by her family to be pregnant. She accused her stepfather of having raped her in July when she had taken food to him as he worked in the fields.
The pair were arrested and charged by police and Tori confessed to having had sex with the girl on three or four occasions, Abdullahi said.
The girl is now six months pregnant. The court has ordered that her lashing not be carried out until she delivers the baby. - Sapa-AFP