Author: Bill Flavell
Kano Appeal Court orders Yahaya to be retried for blasphemy
Yahaya Sharif-Aminu appeal: appeal court orders retrial.
Howard Burman steps down as President
Howard Burman, the AAI President, stepped down from the board today. With Howard moving on, we lose a leader and a friend. Howard joined the AAI board on November 20, 2017, starting out as the board secretary. In February 2020, he was elected President, a post he retained until today. Howard was a great champion of our Advisory Council. We had thought about this idea for some time, but Howard made...
Mubarak Bala: Two Years in Prison Today
Arrest Two years ago today, Mubarak Bala was at home in Kaduna finishing breakfast with his housemate when he heard loud and persistent banging on his front door. Fearing an emergency, he rushed to open it. Standing in his doorway were two burly plainclothes police officers. They grabbed his arms and told him he was under arrest. He asked repeatedly why he was being arrested but the officers would...
Mubarak Bala Sentenced
Some days come and go leaving a fading shadow in our minds. Other days, hit us like a jackammer and leave a deep impression that never fades. April 5, 2022, was one such day. After just shy of two years in prison, after waiting 14 months to be charged and 23 months for his case to come to a court of law, and 15 months after a court found Mubarak Bala was illegally detained and ordered his immediat...
Mubarak Bala Appears in Court
For the first time in the 21 months that he has been incarcerated, Mubarak Bala appeared in court yesterday. He was arrested following a frivolous complaint about a Facebook post on April 28, 2020. He was charged in June 2021 and finally appeared in court on February 1, 2022. Yesterday he was arraigned and pleaded Not Guilty. The case was then adjourned for another 2 months. This is, at least, pro...
The Logic of Atheism
AAI Vice-President, Bill Flavell’s, speech from the January 14th, 2022 World Logic Day event hosted by the Atheist Support Network. Today is World Logic Day. What a great idea! Today we have anti-vaxxers and a pandemic that has killed more than five and a half million people. Today we have climate change that could kill millions of people and make the lives of billions of people unbearable a...
International Blasphemy Day 2021
Today is International Blasphemy Day, a world-wide event introduced in 2009 by The Center for Inquiry. The date was chosen to coincide with the publication of drawings of Muhammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on September 30, 2005. What are blasphemy laws? Blasphemy laws criminalize speech that is critical of religion or religious figures, or speech that a court finds to be offensive to...
Mubarak Bala: One year illegally detained in Nigeria
Nigeria is truly fortunate to have a Federal Constitution that guarantees fundamental human rights. It also has Fundamental Rights Enforcement Rules designed to ensure “enhanced access to justice for all classes of litigants, especially the poor, the illiterate, the uninformed, the vulnerable, the incarcerated, and the unrepresented.” Everyone from the man-in-the-street, the police, po...
Nigeria: How to Stop the Killings