A 14-year-old poisoned her "husband". Now she faces the death penalty.

In a case as tragic as it is shocking, a teenager killed her husband – and now she’s facing the death penalty.

At just 14 years old, Wasila Umar was forced to marry a man more than twice her age.

Less than a week after their wedding, her 35-year-old husband and three of his friends lay dead in the couple’s home in Nigeria.

Wasila, who never had the chance to attend school and comes from a deeply conservative Muslim family, confessed to the police she had poisoned the men’s food during post-wedding celebrations last year in their village near the city of Kano. She said she had laced a rice dish with rat poison purchased at the village market, bringing about a tragic resolution to a sick situation that should never have occurred.

Read more: The child bride who confessed to killing her husband.

“My father forced me into this mess by stubbornly forcing me into a relationship I was not prepared to live in,” she told local newspaper Vanguard. “I told them I don’t like the man but instead for them to consider me, they kept on beating me every day so as to get me married to him,” she said.

Wasila said she regretted her actions.

“Destiny appears to have played a wicked one on me at this early stage of my life,” she said. “I would rededicate the rest of my life to sincerely seek Allah’s forgiveness.”

Now, the prosecution is calling for the death penalty, while her defence lawyer has called for the dismissal of murder charges against her

“We urge your lordship to discharge and acquit the accused,” lawyer Hussaina Aliyu said at the High Court in the small town of Gezawa, AFP reports.

Mr Aliyu said the prosecution failed to establish a link between the cause of the husband, Umar Sani’s death and the little girl’s intent to kill him. The lawyer also questioned the admissibility of a seven-year-old witness.

Amnesty International Australia‘s spokesperson on women’s rights, Ming Yu, told Mamamia that the Nigerian High Court should certainly assess whether the marriage was indeed forced — but that if it was, that would be contravene international human rights law.

“Forced marriage does violate, as can early marriage, the international law requirement that marriages be entered into “only with the free and full consent of the intending parties”,” she said.

“These kind of marriages also expose young girls, who may not be able to consent freely, to coercion and pressure from adults, exploitation and abuse.

“Despite this right embedded in international law, only a few countries have specifically criminalised the practice and in fact the practices of forced and early marriage continue.”