A child bride accused of murdering her husband with rat poison has had the charges against her dropped, Nigerian prosecutors confirmed.
Prosecutor Lamido Abba Soron-Dinki asked the High Court in Gezawa, Kano state, to 'terminate the case of culpable homicide against Wasila Tasi'u, who was 14 when she married Umar Sani.
'With a heavy heart, I apply that the accused be discharged,' he said.
Legal sources in Kano said the country had been.....
under pressure to drop the case which angered human rights groups.
Police previously said Wasila had 'admitted' murdering her 35-year-old husband by signing a confession she could not read - with her thumbprint.
Prosecutors had been seeking the death penalty for the teenager, whose farmer husband was found dead just days after marrying her in April last year.
If she had been found guilty, the teenager - who is from a poor and deeply conservative Muslim family and cannot write - could have become the first child in Nigeria to be executed in 18 years.
Human rights campaigners continually expressed outrage over her treatment, saying she should be seen as a victim of abuse.
But the case prompted mixed reactions in her impoverished home state of Kano, where Sharia (Islamic) law is in place alongside the laws of the government.
That, claim some followers, allows child marriage - and 14 is a normal age for a bride.
Homicide investigator Abdullahi Adamu revealed in court he translated Wasila's statement from her native language, Hausa, into English, which she did not speak.
Despite being unable to read the document she then signed it, he previously told the court.
She could not write her name so 'she had to use a thumbprint,' he added.
A motion by defence lawyers to have the case moved to juvenile court was rejected, despite claims by human rights activists that she is too young to stand trial for murder in a high court.
The use of Sharia law has also made the case more complicated, because there are no guidelines saying where Islamic law ends and state law begins.
According to Human Rights Watch, Nigeria is not known to have executed a juvenile offender since 1997, when the country was ruled by military dictator Sani Abacha.
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