Prosecutors in the northern Nigeria state
of Kaduna have charged a group of 53 people with conspiring to celebrate a gay
wedding.
The accused, arrested last Saturday, have
denied the allegations, with their lawyers saying they were illegally detained.
The court released the group on bail and
the case was remanded to 8 May.
Homosexual acts are banned in socially
conservative Nigeria and are punishable by up to 14 years in jail.
During a court appearance in
Chediya-Zaria, the group pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy, unlawful
assembly and belonging to an unlawful society.
Defence lawyer Yunusa Umar said most of
the accused were students and had been illegally detained for more than 24
hours, the local Premium Times newspaper reported.
Gay rights campaigners who have been in
touch with people involved in the case told the BBC's Stephanie Hegarty in
Lagos the accused were arrested at a birthday party, not a wedding.
Nigeria has an influential Christian
evangelical movement in the south and strong support for Islamic law in the
north, both of which oppose homosexuality.
In January 2014, the Hisbah, or Islamic
police, in Bauchi state raided several locations and arrested about a dozen men
accused of sodomy acts.
Some of the men later appeared before a
Sharia court for a bail hearing and an angry crowd gathered outside, demanding
swift and severe punishment.
Stones were thrown at the court and the
hearing was halted.
Police had to shoot in the air to
disperse the mob and get the suspects back to prison safely, though there they
are also vulnerable.
The ban on homosexuality, brought into
effect in 2014, is used by some police officers and members of the public to
legitimise abuses against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people,
according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).
"Extortion, mob violence, arbitrary
arrest, torture in detention, and physical and sexual violence" are common
against people suspected of homosexual activities, HRW said in a 2016 report.
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