Nurdin Hasan, Banda Aceh – With lawmakers in Indonesia's Aceh province set to pass a draconian Shariah bill on Monday that could lead to married Muslims being stoned to death for committing adultery and single people lashed 100 times for premarital sex, local officials sought to distance themselves from quick implementation of the measure.

The proposed legislation for the semi-autonomous region has drawn criticism from human rights groups that say the bill could lead to abuse. With Aceh already under partial Shariah law, the punishments are part of a bill on jinayat, or Islamic crimes, officials said last week.

As the controversy mounted, they said the legislation needed more study before lawbreakers were actually put to death.

Aceh Regional Secretary Husni Bahri told members of the provincial house on late Friday that the local executive government had yet to fully endorse the measure.

"For now, we have not agreed" to the stoning of married persons, Husni said. "We need to look more in-depth at the issue because, in practice, it is identical to the death penalty."

Husni said the legal system was not prepared to implement a law on stoning. "Carrying out the stoning law should not be done in a hurry," he told lawmakers. " It must be done in stages."

The bill requires "facilities and infrastructure as part of the national legal system" before it can be implemented, he said.

However, Husni stopped far short of condemning the legislation, adding that "in due course if law enforcement agencies and the public are ready to accept it, stoning will be applied in Aceh."

In a draft of the bill obtained by the Jakarta Globe, Article 24 stated that "any person who [has sex outside of wedlock] being subject to be whipped 100 times for the unmarried and stoned to death for those who are married."

Local officials declined comment on the whipping provision.

In addition to adultery, the regulation also outlines a variety of punishments for drinking alcohol, gambling, being in seclusion with a member of the opposite sex, homosexuality and rape. Punishments for other crimes include whipping, fines and prison terms.

Lawmaker Bachrom M Rashid of the United Development Party, the chairman of the special committee considering the bill, said his party backed it because it would deepen the practice of Shariah law in Aceh.

He said, however, that in practice, stoning would be difficult because "to prove a person has committed adultery, there must be four witnesses."

The purpose of the legislation, he said, is to get the accused to seek repentance, not to kill the violators. "We want to save people from going to hell," he said, calling the proposed law "a door to repentance."

House member Moharriadi of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) called the bill "a preventative step for the people of Aceh to avoid moral damage."

The Coalition on Human Rights, a nongovernmental organization, has urged the Aceh legislature to delay passage of the bill because it was incomplete.

The 2006 Law on Governing Aceh, passed by the national House of Representatives, authorized the province to pass regional regulations and said it was free to implement an Islamic criminal code.

Last week, Nurkholis, a member of the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas-HAM), said the legality of the proposed law was in dispute. "Such a code has the potential to violate human rights if it's not enforced properly," he said.

Isolated instances of stoning ordered by Shariah courts have been reported in Nigeria, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iran and elsewhere, but the practice is rare and is routinely denounced by Human Rights Watch among other international bodies.