World News

Lemi Limbu, now in her early 30s, was convicted of the murder of her daughter in 2015. On 4 March, a court in Shinyanga, northern Tanzania, declared she can appeal. She will face a retrial, but a date has yet to be set.

Lawyers and activists have condemned her sentence, saying she should not be in prison at all. Limbu, who remains incarcerated, is a survivor of brutal and repeated sexual and domestic violence and has the developmental age of a child. Under Tanzanian and international law, Limbu should not be held criminally liable, given her intellectual disability.

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She later met Kijiji Nyamabu, an alcoholic, who told Limbu he would marry her – but he said he would never accept her baby daughter, Tabu, because he was not the biological father.

Shortly afterwards, Tabu was found strangled. There were no witnesses and Nyamabu had already fled by the time Limbu brought the authorities to her daughter’s body. She was arrested in August 2011. Nyamabu was never detained.