Boy burnt for stealing fish
09/02/2006 22:31  - (SA)   Raphael Tenthani

Blantyre - A Malawi court on Thursday sentenced a couple to 18 months in jail for burning their 10-year-old son on the cheek in what they claimed to be "Sharia" law to punish him for stealing the family supper.

James Saimoni and his wife, Agnes, admitted that they burnt the boy, who was not named because he is a minor, for stealing fish.

But they insisted that they had done nothing wrong because Islamic law allowed them, as Muslims, to discipline their son.

The boy told the court in the southern lakeside town of Mangochi, 200km north of the commercial capital of Blantyre, that he took the fish because his stepmother denied him adequate food.

A village vigilante group arrested the couple and handed them over to police after the December 6 incident.

Mangochi magistrate Derezina Gomiwa told the couple Malawi is a secular state and has no religious laws.

She observed that incidents of burning children were on the rise in the district.

"It is the duty of the courts to impose meaningful sentences that would act as a deterrent to would-be offenders," she said.

The offence of unlawful wounding carries a maximum sentence of 14 years imprisonment with hard labour in Malawi, but Gomiwa said she passed a lighter sentence because it was a first offence.

More than 80% of Malawi's 12 million people are Christian, although Mangochi is predominantly Muslim.

taken from www.bbc.co.uk

Sheria law in Malawi? What's wrong with Sheria anyways? Who should decide if we should use it or not. Who says that what we call "secular" law is more humane than sheria??