Corpun file 25218 at www.corpun.com
International Business Times (UK), 6 March 2014
Human Rights
Public Whipping for Four Gay Nigerian Men
By Ludovica Iaccino
Four young men have been arrested and publicly whipped for being gay, according to human rights activists.
The men could be jailed for a year each if human rights organisations do not pay an additional fine of 20,000 naira (£72) per convicted man, Dorothy Aken'Ova, convenor of the Coalition for the Defence of Sexual Rights Network, told Associated Press.
Aken'Ova said the men, aged from 20-22, should not have been convicted. Their confessions were beaten out of them, she claimed.
The four were each sentenced to 15 strokes and fined.
The men's families -- embarrassed by the stigma attached to homosexuality in Nigeria -- refused an offer of legal representation because they preferred to negotiate with the judge, Aken'Ova continued.
The hearings in Bauchi city was [sic] delayed from January, when a mob tried to stone the accused outside the courthouse and demanded the death penalty.
A wave of arrests and corporal punishment came after Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan signed the controversial Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act into law. Under it, homosexuals face up to 14 years in jail.
Anyone who registers, operates or takes part in a gay organisation or is openly gay in public faces up to 10 years in prison.
© Copyright 2014 IBT Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Corpun file 25226 at www.corpun.com
Royal Times of Nigeria, Ilorin, 20 March 2014
4 vagrants get strokes of cane for criminal trespass
An Abuja Grade 1 Area Court in Kado on Thursday sentenced four vagrants to five strokes of the cane each for trespassing into Utako Primary School.
The convicts, all of no fixed address, are Mustapha Ali, 20; Adagba Lanre, 20; Adamu Danui, 25 and Joshua Ibrahim, 22.
The presiding judge, Mr Abubakar Sadiq, sentenced them after they pleading guilty to trespassing into the school and constituting public nuisance.
Ali, Lanre, Danui and Ibrahim, who immediately got their punishment, were warned by the presiding judge to change their ways.
Sadiq warned that next time they appeared in court for any crime, they would get stiff punishment.
Earlier, the prosecutor, Sgt. Simon Ibrahim, had told the court that the convicts were arrested by a team of police men from the Utako Police Station on March 16.
The prosecutor said that the team, led by Sp. Bala Garba while on duty, arrested the convicts.
He said that they were caught as they jointly trespassed into the school after they were warned to stay away from the building.
The prosecutor said that they constituted public nuisance.
He said that even when they were arrested, they could not give satisfactory account of themselves. (NAN)
Royal Times of Nigeria. 2014 © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
