A woman who claims that she will be stoned to death if she returns to her native Nigeria is threatened with deportation from Ireland, writes Kitty Holland
Nigerian Nimota Banidele (38) says that she is facing the death penalty if she is returned to Nigeria because of having had her three children outside marriage.
Sentenced to death by stoning two years ago, under the strict Islamic code known as Sharia law, she managed to flee Nigeria and get to Ireland.
She feels safe here, she says. However, her application for asylum has been turned down, and if she is not granted humanitarian leave to remain, she will be deported.
"If I have to go back there, they will kill me. They will find me. I am very worried," she says.
With her asylum application and her appeal refused, her last hope now is that she may be granted humanitarian leave to remain in Ireland, or that a judicial review of her case may succeed.
"They [Immigration Unit] said I could relocate and live in a different part of Nigeria. But my photograph has been put on a list and it will be known I am wanted. I cannot go back to Nigeria."
Asked about this, the Department of Justice said that it could not comment on individual cases.
Sitting in the small bed-sit she shares with a Nigerian friend in Dublin's North Strand, she speaks somewhat nervously about how she came to be sentenced to death.
"I come from a city called Guacsu in Zamfara state in the north, where Sharia law came in in 2000. I already had my babies, but they started killing people who had children out of wedlock."
Her partner and she had split up and she had been living with her father and working as a teacher, she explains.
Sharia law is a strict system of religious law which has been adopted by several states in northern Nigeria. Although not recognised by the federal authorities in the capital, Abuja, the code supersedes federal law in these states and defines a specific group of offences as "Hadd" offences. Among these are unlawful sexual intercourse (outside marriage), false accusation of unlawful intercourse, drinking alcohol, theft and highway robbery. Sexual offences carry a penalty of stoning to death or flogging, while theft is punishable by cutting off a hand.
Stoning involves being either tied to a wall or to a post, or buried up to the neck, before stones and rocks are thrown at the victim until they die.
Nimota says that she was sentenced to this fate in August 2002.
"My three babies are still in Guacsu, with a friend who was in my home when I was arrested," she says.
She clearly finds it difficult to talk about her children, sons named Martins (9) and Moses (7) and a daughter named Peace (5). She simply nods when it is suggested that she must miss them.
"After I lost my father in 2000 they were writing people's names on lists that they wanted to arrest and they called me to court. They sent me to prison for two weeks and said they were going to kill me."
On August 26th that year one of the guards called her out to "have some fun" with him, she says.
"I told him 'Let me have a bath first', and when he let me outside to have a bath I ran away from that village to another village many miles away called Kontoshi, in Katsina state. The people there didn't know I was a prisoner and I was begging for money."
From there she managed to get to Abuja, where she says she went to the police to tell them that women were being killed in Zamfara state for having children outside marriage.
"They said they couldn't help me unless the government makes a change to the law.
"I was trying to think what I was going to do. I couldn't believe it, and I was in a park weeping and crying because I could not go home. I did not want to face the humiliation of a public stoning. While I was there, I met a Catholic father, and he told me he could help me get to a place I'd be safe."
She says that the priest arranged her journey from Abuja to the former capital, Lagos, then to Amsterdam and finally to Cork. She arrived in Ireland on September 15th 2002 and immediately applied for asylum.
Nimota has not been able to contact her children since she left Nigeria, although she says she knows they are being looked after well. "I would like to bring them to Ireland," she says, "though that will be difficult, because I cannot go back there. I am here to save my life."
The Residents Against Racism group, which works with refugees and asylum-seekers, is seeking a judicial review of her case. Its spokeswoman, Ms Rosanna Flynn, says that Nimota's "is the worst situation I have come across yet".