Zuwayra Shinkafi (f) and Sani Yahaya (m) (Nigeria)
Crime: Extra-marital sex or “Adultery”
July 2003

Zuwayra Shinkafi, a young teenage girl was married to an unnamed man and lived in the village of Shinkafi. She was having a consensual extra-marrital relationship with Sanj Yahaya, a teenage boy from Gusau village. A local monitoring group got news of the affair and arrested both of them in Gusau, where they were tried by the Upper Sharia Court, charged with the `crime`of sex outside marraige and subsequently flogged, all within two or three days.

Sanj Yahaya was given 80 lashes of the whip and sentenced to ten months imprisonment, while Zuwayra received 30 lashes of the whip, because she was `not considered mature`.

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