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FG, Amnesty differ over Nigerian on death row in Saudi Arabia

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Amnesty International has petitioned the House of Representatives over a Nigerian, Sulaimon Olufemi, who is on death row in Saudi Arabia.

The global human rights organisation alleged that Oluefemi, who was arrested alongside 12 other Nigerians during a raid by the police on September 29, 2002, was sentenced to death in May 2005.

Officials of the AI appeared before the House Committee on Diaspora in Abuja on Wednesday.

A representative of the organisation, Osai Ojigho, said,

“Amnesty International has been working on this case since 2002 and we are aware of the issues around this case. Particularly, all the defendants who were released in 2017, one of them died in prison. The 13 Nigerians were tortured. Unfortunately, Olufemi who was youngest of the group, was the first person to crack (break) under torture; the first person to put his fingerprints on the confessional statement in Arabic.

“It was only when he got to court that he realised that in the statement, he admitted to having hit the police officer on the head. Unfortunately, they were not provided with any legal representation. We are grateful to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, especially for the piece of information that the daughter of the deceased police officer will turn 18 in October.”

Amnesty explained that according to Shari’a law in Saudi Arabia, if a crime is punished under the rule of qusas (retribution), as in Sulaimon Olufemi’s case, relatives of the murder victim have the right to decide if the offender should be executed or pardoned, in which case the death penalty is dropped, sometimes in return for diya (compensation or ‘blood money’).

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The AI further explained that pardons by victims’ relatives must be certified by courts of law. However, this does not automatically mean that a convicted person is spared from execution, since judges have the power to invoke hadd (divinely prescribed fixed offences and punishments) and consider the murder as harmful to public order, in addition to it being a crime against the victim and his family.

Ojigho said,

“Because there’s lack of transparency on the part of Saudi authorities; we have engaged with them a number of times and I think the last we heard from them was when they wrote Amnesty International in 2007, that the death sentence had been ratified by the highest court in Saudi Arabia. We take this issue seriously because Saudi Arabia doesn’t repent when they want to carry out an execution.”

The Federal Government, however, told Amnesty to be sincere on how the organisation was handling the matter.

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Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, who also appeared before the committee, stated that the truth about the circumstances leading to the arrest and prosecution of Olufemi must first be established.

Dabiri-Erewa said,

Amnesty International, you have a lot of work to do with Saudi. As we were engaging with them the day before yesterday, they were still insisting that why would somebody coming (into the country) for Ummrah be involved in a mob action. This is an opportunity to tell our people that there are some things that can be avoided.

“Somebody held a gun and they said it was him (Olufemi). We are praying it is not him and we are praying that this intervention will yield results. They (Saudi) don’t see laws as we do. And you know, according to Sharia law, that if you kill somebody that does not deserve to be killed, you will be killed. So, as far as they are concerned, whoever they sentence to death deserves it. They don’t do emotions with law, we do emotions with law here.

“So, we are hoping that with the intervention of Chairman, Diaspora Committee, and Attorney-General (of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, SAN), he will be saved. At the same time, we keep warning our citizens: don’t be where you shouldn’t be. We pray (that) we succeed in this case. The girl will be 18 in October and we hope she will see reason to say, ‘pay the blood money and go.’

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Chairman of the committee, Tolulope Akande-Sadipe, said,

“It will be a sad thing if an innocent soul is executed. The Saudi Arabians have their own laws and execution is within the laws. We cannot change that but what we can do is to implore the Saudi government to look at this case again with an unbiased eye, because this young man is innocent and if executed, it is a sin against humanity and a sin before Allah.”

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