Nigeria Islamic court sentences three to death by stoning for raping boys

An Islamic court in northern Nigeria's Bauchi state has sentenced three men to death by stoning for raping two boys, an official said Friday.

Bauchi is among a dozen states in predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria where Sharia law is in operation alongside common criminal justice.

The court in the town of Ningi handed down the sentences on the trio on Wednesday, Sharia police or Hisbah official Adamu Dankafi told AFP.

They were accused of raping two boys after drugging them, he said.

Raping minors is punishable by death under Nigeria's Sharia law, although like most other death sentences it has never been enforced. In this case, the men were charged under a law related to homosexual acts.

"The Upper Sharia Court One in Ningi handed down the death sentence on the three men for committing homosexual acts with two brothers aged 10 and 12," Dankafi said.

"The three are to be stoned to death as prescribed by the Bauchi state Sharia penal code based on their confessions during interrogation by our men and before the court," he said.

He said the men were arrested in Gwada village in May following complaints by parents of the two boys who said they had been drugged before the act.

Dankafi said the men aged between 20 and 70, were not represented by a lawyer during the one-day trial, adding that they have one month to appeal the sentence.

Africa's most populous country, Nigeria is almost equally divided between the mostly Christian south and the predominantly Muslim north.