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A Nigerian court on Thursday spared a woman from being stoned to death by overturning an Islamic court's conviction for adultery, easing pressure on the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Western governments led by the European Union had urged Obasanjo to intervene in the case of Amina Lawal who was convicted in March 2002 after having a baby outside wedlock.

Nigerian mother Amina Lawal holds her baby girl at Katsina court in northern Nigeria, Sept. 25, 2003. A Nigerian court spared Lawal from being stoned to death by overturning an Islamic court's conviction for adultery, easing pressure on the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo.  [Reuters]

The sharia judgment had divided Muslim opinion and deepened a deadly sectarian rift in the country of over 120 million, split almost evenly between Muslims and Christians.

But while Church and moderate Muslim groups applauded the ruling, many in northern Nigeria were not so sure of the reaction from hardline Islamists. The mood at Friday Muslim prayers in major northern cities could reflect their feeling.

"We suspect there will be a lot of pressure from the political and religious caucus here in the north," said Shehu Sani, president of northern-based Civil Rights Congress.

"Their perception is that the government is only bowing to international pressure," said Sani, whose group had mobilized for protests if Lawal's conviction were upheld.

"We have suspended our mobilization, but we will resume our action if the prosecution appeals," Sani told Reuters from Kaduna, a hotbed of sectarian unrest in the north. Any prosecution appeal must be lodged within three months.

The judges based their ruling largely on technicalities.

"It is the view of this court that the judgment of the Upper Sharia Court, Funtua, was very wrong and the appeal of Amina Lawal is hereby discharged and acquitted," judge Ibrahim Maiangwa said.

He said the original conviction "is not consonant with the laws of Katsina state because the police did not arrest the suspects when they committed the offence."

Lawal, holding her baby, smiled as the ruling was read out to the courtroom packed with journalists, and human rights lawyers and activists who had spearheaded the appeal of the 31-year-old illiterate.

"It is a victory for womanhood and humanity over certain man-made defects and mistakes," said Hauwa Ibrahim, a woman activist and a member of Lawal's defense team.

Women's groups had condemned what they said was the discriminatory nature of sharia rulings in cases of adultery. The male partner usually escapes injunction.

JUDGMENT HAILED

Church and moderate Muslim leaders praised the judgment.

"We are all very happy about the acquittal of Amina Lawal," the Catholic Archbishop of Lagos Anthony Olubunmi Okogie told MISNA, the Catholic missionary news agency.

"The Koran does not foresee the death penalty. The sacred Muslim book clearly says that life is a gift of God," he added.

The London-based Islamic Human Rights Commission denounced "selective and abusive" use of sharia.

Islamic law as practised in Nigeria "ignores corruption in high places but targets the powerless," it said.

Even before the five sharia judges -- one voicing a dissenting opinion -- concluded their reading, Lawal was escorted from the courtroom via a back door and whisked away in a police vehicle for her own safety.

Police in Katsina, in the heartland of the conservative Islamic north, braced for a backlash from Muslim fundamentalists demanding Lawal's blood.

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