Naifaru court sentences woman in absentia to death by stoning

Naifaru magistrate court has sentenced a 25-year-old woman from Naifaru island to death by stoning, after she confessed to having extramarital sex.

Magistrate Judge Mohamed Moosa passed the sentence in absentia solely based on her confession; that she had committed 'fornication' and had once before been married.

The case was reported to the police in May of last year by the health center after they delivered the woman’s child, believed to have been conceived in the ‘unlawful sexual act’, the sentence says.

The sentence makes no mention of the child's father, although RaajjeMV understands that he is native to an island in the same atoll and the family has 'no way to contact' him.

Judge Moosa referred to Hudud Offenses, in 1205 of the Maldivian Penal Code, which allows him to pass sentences predetermined in the Quran, under Islamic Sharia.

In his sentence, Judge Moosa refers to the woman as a ‘muhsana’, a person who is or had been in a valid and consummated marriage and is so subject to the punishment of death by stoning.

While women and men who have never been married are sentenced to flogging, as opposed to death by stoning or ‘Rajm’ as it called in Islamic law, the woman herself had been divorced at the time of the act.

The current government, which took office in November of last year, has expressed its commitment to upholding the moratorium on the death penalty, until adequate judicial reform.

If the sentence is to be carried out, the case must have exhausted the entire appeal process.