When the Islamic judge announced his devastating verdict and cries of "Allahu Akbar" resounded around the packed hall, the bewildered single mother, fearing for her life, sought shelter under a strong arm in black lawyers' robes.

On August 19, 2002 -- when Amina Lawal lost her first appeal against a sentence she be stoned to death for bearing a baby out of wedlock -- her friend and lawyer Hauwa Ibrahim stood tall for her, shielding her tear-streaked face from the crowd as they left the Sharia courthouse.

Hauwa Ibrahim was to stand by Amina and her tiny daughter Wasila for 14 more months until she eventually convinced another conservative bench of senior Islamic clerics that her client was a victim of a miscarriage of justice and obtained her complete acquittal.

Amina had won her life back and Ibrahim had won something suprising for a young woman who grew up in a tiny village in Nigeria's rural Muslim north. She had won the respect of many in a male-dominated legal profession both at home and abroad.

And on Wednesday, the 37-year-old barrister won something else: the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for outstanding bravery and determination in the battle for universal human rights.

Most girls from Ibrahim's village were married off before they could think of a career or studies, some of them becoming wives as young as 12 years old. Ibrahim had other plans. She worked to pay her way through school and eventually qualify as a lawyer.

Then came 1999 and Nigeria's difficult return to civilian rule.

Tired of the arbitrary justice meted out by their former military rulers, the mainly-Muslim population of northern Nigeria clamoured for a return to the stark certainties of Islamic law, which they hoped would hold the rich and powerful to the same standards as the poor.

Unfortunately the great popular appeal of Sharia was not matched by any great government effort to find and train adequate Islamic lawyers and judges, educate the populace or provide the legal system with adequate support.

Ad hoc vigilante groups sprang up and courts meeting in one-room village halls began handing out the harshest of sentences -- lashings, amputations and stonings -- with little regard for due process and even less knowledge of the law they were hired to enforce.

Ibrahim became one of a small but eventually influential group of lawyers struggling, not to abolish Sharia, but to ensure the courts operated properly within their own rules and to protect illiterate rural housewives like Amina from an agonising fate.

At first Ibrahim was careful to work quietly in the background. She feared that stirring up too much publicity would anger judges and Nigerian pubic opinion, both already astonished at seeing a young woman challenge the work of the male-dominated courts.

As a woman, Ibrahim did not herself have the right to address the court, but worked tirelessly to provide her male colleagues with the knowledge and expertise they needed to overturn unfair verdicts. Her turning point came at the trial of Safiya Husseini, who was accused of adultery.

The case attracted enormous international publicity, and briefly made Safiya a media star. Ibrahim saw that once the Nigerian government had become aware of the scandal such trials generated in the outside world, the courts were more inclined to follow the rules.

When Amina was convicted Ibrahim, despite her own humble nature, became the media face of the defence team. And while she did what she could to shield her friend from overexposure to the media glare, she made sure that journalists could follow and understand the case.

This eventually brought victory, but not without cost. Ibrahim, herself now a wife and mother, became a hate figure among some hardliners.

One Friday in 2003, as an AFP reporter was talking to her in her Abuja office, she received a call warning her that preachers had denounced her after weekly prayers and that mobs were planning to attack her home.

She handled the situation with her customary calm and bravery, politely asking that the interview not drag on much longer, as she wanted to move locations for a few hours.

Her fame also opened new opportunities for her, and she has recently spent much of her time studying in the United States.

But she is expected back in Nigeria in a couple of months and will doubtless have a leading role to play when Africa's biggest country eventually decides whether it wishes to follow its secular constitution or Islamic law as it faces the 21st century.