In Nigeria, the long ordeal of an atheist activist sentenced for blasphemy

Twenty-four years in prison. Relatives and defenders of Mubarak Bala are still struggling to collect the heavy sentence imposed on April 5 on the famous Nigerian atheist activist for blasphemy and disturbing public order. The verdict was pronounced after a speedy trial in the High Court of Kano State, in the Muslim and conservative north of Nigeria.

“It is a ridiculous condemnation. We can hardly understand how they arrived at this figure”, enraged James Ibor, one of Mubarak Bala’s lawyers, who demanded to receive the written judgment – as is the custom in Nigeria – in order to launch an appeal procedure. Court documents show that the charges were extensively amended, so “contestable”according to the defense, going from 10 to 18 in the space of a few months, in order to increase the penalty incurred.

Mubarak Bala, 37, former president of the Humanists Association of Nigeria, a civil society organization advocating the primacy of human rights over religious precepts, was arrested on April 28, 2020, after posting a series of messages criticizing Islam and its prophet. A silver lining appeared in December this year when the Federal High Court in Abuja ordered the police to release him on bail. But this decision was ignored by the Kano judge.

On April 5, nearly two years after his arrest, Mubarak Bala finally pleaded guilty to the 18 charges against him, to the surprise of his lawyers. “He said he made his decision overnight. We asked for a suspension of the meeting to be able to speak to him”, tells M^and Ibrahim Buba, present on site with James Ibor. “We wanted to make sure he was in a condition to make an informed and clear decision,” confirms the latter. At the time, Mubarak Bala seemed to hear the arguments of his lawyers who wanted to dissuade him. But when the trial resumed, he confirmed that he wanted to plead guilty. However, he implored “mercy and clemency” of the court. A very vain prayer, since the accused was immediately condemned to an exemplary sentence, for having “insulted the Prophet of Islam, all followers of Islam in Kano State, which constitutes a disturbance of public order”, according to the indictment.

“The Spirit of Sharia”

“By pleading guilty, he surely did not expect such a severe sentence”, sighs Leo Igwe, another activist in the humanist movement in Nigeria, who is fighting against blasphemy laws in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. “The authorities wanted to send a very strong message, from his abduction by the security services to his disappearance for many months, including his imprisonment, the refusal of his parole and the constant postponement of his trial”, he lists. For years, Mubarak Bala had been actively campaigning on social media to claim his atheism and denounce the extremist Salafist movements that thrive in the North. In 2014, his fight had already earned him forcible confinement in a psychiatric hospital for eighteen days.

Unlike Leo Igwe, who is a Christian and lives in southern Nigeria, Mubarak Bala grew up in a conservative Muslim family in the north. His father is even a well-known theologian in Kano, where a strict version of sharia – Islamic law – has been applied alongside common law since the early 2000s. is considered a major crime. And even though Mubarak Bala was not tried by an Islamic court, “It was for the authorities to show that no one can win a blasphemy trial in Kano”, according to Leo Igwe. He accuses justice of having complied with “the spirit of Sharia” to render its verdict, “trampling on the Nigerian Constitution and human rights”.

If he had appeared before an Islamic court, Mubarak Bala would undoubtedly have incurred the death penalty, like the musician Yahaya Sharif Aminu, sentenced to death on August 10, 2020 in Kano, after a closed trial. closed during which he also pleaded guilty. The young man, a member of a Sufi brotherhood, was accused of blaspheming against the Prophet Muhammad in an audio message that had been widely shared on WhatsApp. But this judgment was finally overturned by a court of appeal in January 2021, the judges having highlighted numerous irregularities in the procedure and requested that a new trial be held. Since then, the regional authorities have continued to postpone the examination of a new appeal by the lawyers of Yahaya Sharif Aminu, who are asking for the outright lifting of the proceedings against their client, who is still imprisoned.

No news for seven months

Mubarak Bala and his relatives also had to wait a long time before the activist was finally brought to justice and formally charged. After his arrest in April 2020, his wife Amina had no news of him for almost seven months. “I was recovering from my delivery when a friend of Mubarak called me to tell me that he had been arrested in Kaduna where he worked and taken to Kano”, remembers the young woman, who had just given birth to a little boy. His “thousands” Desperate calls and messages to the Kano Police Commissioner went unanswered, until her husband finally contacted her from Goron Dutse prison in Kano suburb, where he is still incarcerated.

Amina Mubarak obviously did not expect such a harsh sentence, but she feels some relief that a verdict has finally been delivered and that “Things can move forward from there”. The young woman, who lives in Abuja, the federal capital, last saw her husband in November, but speaks to him regularly on the phone. “If he hadn’t pleaded guilty, they would have continued to postpone his trial forever, she says. He has already spent two years in prison! He feels threatened, under pressure… but he is convinced that he will not spend so many years behind bars. » Mubarak Bala’s lawyers say they have received their client’s consent to appeal, a process that is expected to take several more months.