More than 150 people from Africa, Europe and North America have offered to come and serve a prison sentence in Nigeria to spare the young Omar Farouq, sentenced to ten years of detention for blasphemy by a religious court in Kano State, located in the north of the country.
The 13-year-old, incarcerated since February, had insulted God in public during an argument with a friend.
Denounced by a police officer, he was immediately imprisoned and tried in August.
Her family, meanwhile, had to flee their home because of threats of reprisals.
Despite international mobilization, the child was still behind bars on Wednesday, October 7, his lawyer, Maître Kola Alapinni, told France 24.
The solidarity movement for the liberation of Omar Farouq was launched from Poland by Piotr Cywinski, the director of the Auschwitz memorial, who spoke directly to the Nigerian president.
In 2018, he had received in Auschwitz Muhammadu Buhari, who was then moved by the fate of the millions of Jews exterminated during a visit to the former camp held by the Nazis.
22-year-old musician sentenced to death
Piotr Cywinski asked for the pardon of Omar Farouq.
If a pardon was not possible the historian said he and a hundred volunteers were prepared to spend a month in a Nigerian prison to serve the child's sentence.
As the director of a memorial at a place "where children were imprisoned and murdered, I cannot remain indifferent to this shameful sentence for mankind," he said in his letter to Muhammadu Buhari, posted on Twitter on September 25.
A letter remained unanswered.
The director of @AuschwitzMuseum wrote the President of Nigeria and asked him to pardon 13-year old Omar Farouq sentenced for 10 years imprisonment.
He declares he is ready to share part of the sentence.
'I cannot remain indifferent to this disgraceful sentence for humanity.'
pic.twitter.com/EzVBjCzgcY
- Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) September 25, 2020
According to the representative of UNICEF in Nigeria, Peter Hawkins, the judgment of the Islamic court which condemned Omar Farouq “goes against all the fundamental principles of the rights of the child that Nigeria, and therefore the State of Kano, is committed to respect ”.
He recalls that the country ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991 and passed a law on children's rights in 2003.
Sharia, or Islamic religious law, is enforced in 12 of Nigeria's 36 states, raising questions about the compatibility of courts responsible for enforcing Islamic law in Muslim areas of the country and secular jurisdictions, with two judicial systems ruling in parallel.
Under Sharia law, Omar Farouq has reached puberty, so he is being tried as an adult.
The Kano Court is particularly renowned for its severity.
The same court sentenced Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, a 22-year-old musician, to death in September for sharing a song deemed blasphemous on WhatsApp.
The two cases are linked, they were tried on the same day by the same religious judge.
It is also by filing an appeal for the case of Yahaya Sharif-Aminu that the lawyer Kola Alapinni discovered that Omar Farouq had been locked up for several months for blasphemy.
He immediately took up the child's file.
A debate on secularism in Nigeria
Reacting to Piotr Cywinski's letter, Salihu Tanko Yakasai, a special adviser to the governor of Kano, said that "the position of the Kano state government remains the ruling of the Sharia court", leaving little hope for to a local grace for Omar Farouq.
For Me Kola Alapinni the fight will be legal.
He filed an appeal with the highest court in Kano State.
According to him, religious courts have no penal value.
Any appeal will, he said, have to be held in secular courts and if necessary, go to Nigeria's highest legal authority.
"Ultimately, our goal is to ensure that there is no more state interference with religion in Nigeria," he told France 24.
In the country, the conviction of the two young people sparked a debate on secularism in a state divided into two religious zones, Muslim in the North and mainly Christian in the South.
With Reuters
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