Greater than 60 individuals are in jail in Nigeria in reference to an alleged homosexual wedding ceremony final week, which is against the law within the nation, the police and their lawyer stated on Monday.
The court docket granted a remand request from the police following a listening to on Monday within the southern metropolis of Warri in Delta state, the place the suspects have been arrested on Aug. 28 following a tip.
“The suspects have been arraigned in court docket at present and the decide has dominated that they be remanded in jail for 2 weeks,” Delta state police stated in an announcement. It didn’t say what number of had been remanded, however police final week stated 67 individuals had been arrested.
Defence lawyer Ochuko Ohimor, who’s representing 60 suspects, stated that whereas the following listening to will come up on Sept. 18, he’s working to get bail for the suspects.
He put the whole variety of these remanded at 69, including they’re going through costs related to allegations that they have been celebrating a homosexual wedding ceremony.
“All we’re doing now’s to carry up bail purposes on their behalf … whether it is discovered meritorious it [the court] can admit them to bail. The bail software can come earlier than the expiration of the 14-day remand order,” he stated.
Broad regulation concentrating on LGBTQ individuals
Nigeria’s Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act in 2013 made it it unlawful for same-sex people to marry, however it additionally restricts the general public show of same-sex relationships, punishing anybody who enters right into a same-sex marriage or civil union with 14 years in jail and a 10-year sentence for anybody who facilitates or takes half in any such union.
However the scope of the Nigerian regulation goes properly past its very particular wording, he stated, explaining that it has a “stifling impact” on LGBTQ organizations and particular person actions, Graeme Reid, director of the LGBT rights program at New York-based Human Rights Watch, stated in an interview with CBC Information on August 28.
“There have been arrests up to now however his does appear to be probably the most important arrests beneath the regulation,” he stated.
Amnesty Worldwide’s Nigeria workplace condemned final week’s arrests and known as for “an instantaneous finish to this witch-hunt.”
“In a society the place corruption is rampant, this [same-sex] regulation banning similar intercourse relationships is more and more getting used for harassment, extortion and blackmail of individuals,” Isa Sanusi, the group’s director in Nigeria, instructed The Related Press final week.
Nigeria is considered one of 32 international locations in Africa that criminalize homosexuality — together with Uganda, which might impose the dying penalty in some instances beneath it just lately enacted Anti-Homosexuality Act.
Though the Nigerian authorities’s laws doesn’t impose the dying penalty for homosexuality, there have been individuals sentenced to dying in Sharia courts in predominantly Muslim states within the nation’s north.
Three males arrested within the state of Bauchi in June 2022 have been ordered to be stoned to death for partaking in homosexuality. Sharia court docket sentences should be permitted by a state governor, and it is unclear if the sentence was carried out.
World Affairs Canada warns LGBTQ travellers to Nigeria to “rigorously think about the dangers” of visiting the nation.