A 14-year-old Nigerian girl accused of murdering her 35-year-old husband by putting rat poison in his food could face the death penalty, Nigerian prosecutors said Thursday.
The trial of Wasila Tasi'u, from a poor northern Nigeria family, has sparked a heated debate on the role of underage marriage in the conservative Muslim region, especially whether an adolescent girl can consent to be a bride.
Prosecutors at the High Court in Gezawa, outside Nigeria's second city of Kano, filed an amended complaint that charged Tasi'u with one count of murder over the killing of Umar Sani two weeks after their April wedding in the village of Unguwar Yansoro.
Lead prosecutor Lamido Abba Soron-Dinki said that if convicted, the charge is "punishable with death" and indicated the state would seek the maximum penalty.
Activists, including in Nigeria's mainly Christian south, have called for Tasi'u's immediate release, saying she should be rehabilitated as a victim and noting the prospect that she was raped by the man she married.
The affected families have denied that Tasi'u was forced into marriage, arguing that girls across the impoverished region marry at 14 and that Tasi'u and Sani followed the traditional system of courtship.
According to Nigeria's marriage act, anyone under 21 can marry provided they have parental consent and so evidence of an agreement between Tasi'u and her father Tasiu Mohammed could undermine claims of a forced union.
But defence lawyer Hussaina Aliyu has insisted the case is not a debate about the role of youth marriage in a Muslim society.
Instead, she has argued that under criminal law a 14-year-old cannot be charged with murder in a high court and has demanded that the case be moved to the juvenile system.
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