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Piotr Cywinski.
Omar Marques / Anadolu Agency
- Omar Farouq was accused of making blasphemous statements during an argument and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
- Piotr Cywinski said he and 119 other volunteers would take on the boy’s punishment and each would spend a month in a Nigerian jail.
- UNICEF said the ruling was “incorrect” and contradicted the international agreements Nigeria had signed.
The director of the Auschwitz Memorial in Poland has written to the President of Nigeria offering to serve part of a 10-year jail sentence that was handed down to a 13-year-old boy for blasphemy.
Piotr Cywinski requested a pardon for Omar Farouq, who was accused of making blasphemous statements during an argument and sentenced by a sharia court in Nigeria’s northern Kano state last month.
If a pardon was not possible, Cywinski said he and 119 other volunteers would take on the punishment of the child and spend a month in a Nigerian jail.
As director of a monument to a place “where children were imprisoned and murdered, I cannot remain indifferent to this shameful sentence for humanity,” he said in the letter to President Muhammadu Buhari, posted on the Memorial’s Twitter account.
Two spokespersons for the Nigerian president declined to comment on Saturday’s unusual intervention.
The presidency has not ruled on the sentence that was condemned by rights groups. The UN children’s agency, UNICEF, said last month that the ruling was “incorrect” and that it went against the international agreements Nigeria had signed.
A special adviser to the governor of Kano said he had seen the letter on social media.
“The position of the Kano state government remains a decision of the sharia court,” Salihu Tanko Yakasai told Reuters.
Baba Jibo Ibrahim, a spokesman for the Kano State Judiciary, said he had not seen the letter, but added that the president had the power to forgive the child.
Nigeria is evenly divided between the predominantly Christian south and the predominantly Muslim north. Twelve of the 36 states of Nigeria apply sharia.
