Kano State

In the northern Nigerian state of Kano, a 13-year-old boy has been sentenced to ten years in prison by a Sharia court for "blasphemy". The boy is said to have spoken obscenely about the Almighty in a dispute with a friend - what exactly Omar Farouq said was not disclosed.

Piotr Cywiński, the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial, and 119 other people have offered to serve one month prison time each instead of the boy serving ten years. Cywiński written a letter to the Nigerian President and stated that "whatever the boy said, just because of his age he cannot be held fully responsible" and that he could not remain silent being "the director of the memorial of an extermination camp, where children were also imprisoned and murdered".