A young Sudanese woman facing execution for killing her husband as he tried to rape her has had her death sentence quashed.
Lawyers for 19-year-old Noura Hussein announced the news on Tuesday afternoon and said the verdict for premeditated murder had also been quashed.
The appeal court in Khartoum has found her guilty of manslaughter and has sentenced her to five years in prison.
As Hussein was told of the news, celebration broke out in the prison in Omdurman, as the women inmates began ululating.
Her supporters, who organized a petition on her behalf, said they were “elated” by the decision.
Hussein, who was forced to marry at 16, had been sentenced to death by hanging.
She became the focus of a global campaign with a series of petitions in her support reaching 1 million signatures.
High-profile figures joined the campaign to get the sentence overturned, among them the model Naomi Campbell, actors Mira Sorvino, Emma Watson and Rose McGowan, and former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard.
The case has underlined the issue of forced marriage, including of minors, and women’s rights in the Sudanese courts system.
CNN reported that her family had now been ordered to pay 337,000 Sudanese pounds (US$18,700) in “blood money” to the relatives of her victim.
Hussein had been with her husband for six days when he raped her with the assistance of his brother, another relative, and a witness, who held her down, her supporters said.
When he attempted to rape her again the following day, she stabbed him before fleeing to her own parents’ house, who handed her over to police.
In a statement, Hussein said she had picked up the knife with the idea of killing herself.
Under Sudanese law, the repeated sexual assaults by her husband were not considered rape because Hussein was his wife.
One of her lawyers, Ahmer Sibair, said forced marriage was a problem in Sudan.
“Marrying girls and women without their consent is common in Sudan, and it causes so many problems. They marry a girl as a child and without her consent, and so many of them lost their chances to be educated,” Sibair said.
Hussein told the Guardian from the prison in Omdurman last month that if she was pardoned, she planned to study.
“When I get out of here, I want to study law to defend other oppressed people,” she said.
Activists said Hussein’s legal team had been harassed by the authorities.
Her lawyers were stopped from holding a news conference by state security last week.
“We are very pleased that Noura has won the court appeal against her death sentence, and we celebrate it as a positive step for both her, and women and girls generally in Sudan,” said Judy Gitau, a Nairobi-based human rights lawyer for Equality Now. “However, sentencing her to five years in prison and a fine for defending herself against her rapist is still not acceptable and we are looking at next steps to support her.”
After years of isolation, Sudan, a designated terrorism sponsor whose leader has been indicted on war crimes charges, has made efforts to improve its relations with Western powers.
In January, the US government eased sanctions against Khartoum as a step toward normalizing relations.
There have been intensifying contacts between Khartoum and the EU as well, prompted largely by concerns over immigration.
DIPLOMATIC THAW: The Canadian prime minister’s China visit and improved Beijing-Ottawa ties raised lawyer Zhang Dongshuo’s hopes for a positive outcome in the retrial China has overturned the death sentence of Canadian Robert Schellenberg, a Canadian official said on Friday, in a possible sign of a diplomatic thaw as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks to boost trade ties with Beijing. Schellenberg’s lawyer, Zhang Dongshuo (張東碩), yesterday confirmed China’s Supreme People’s Court struck down the sentence. Schellenberg was detained on drug charges in 2014 before China-Canada ties nosedived following the 2018 arrest in Vancouver of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟). That arrest infuriated Beijing, which detained two Canadians — Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig — on espionage charges that Ottawa condemned as retaliatory. In January
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
SHOW OF SUPPORT: The move showed that aggression toward Greenland is a question for Europe and Canada, and the consequences are global, not just Danish, experts said Canada and France, which adamantly oppose US President Donald Trump’s wish to control Greenland, were to open consulates in the Danish autonomous territory’s capital yesterday, in a strong show of support for the local government. Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has repeatedly insisted that Washington needs to control the strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island for security reasons. Trump last month backed off his threats to seize Greenland after saying he had struck a “framework” deal with NATO chief Mark Rutte to ensure greater US influence. A US-Denmark-Greenland working group has been established to discuss ways to meet Washington’s security concerns
RSS