A Sudanese woman accused of adultery has been sentenced to death by stoning and is being held shackled with her six-month-old baby in jail, activists said yesterday, in the second such sentence in the past few months in the country.
President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said last month that Sudan would adopt a “100 per cent” Islamic constitution, prompting concerns the country would apply Islamic law more strictly after the secession of mostly non-Muslim South Sudan a year ago.
A court in Khartoum sentenced Laila Ibrahim Issa Jamool (23) on July 10th to death by stoning for adultery, said Sudanese human rights activist Fahima Hashim. The Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA), a women’s rights group, said it had assigned lawyers who had appealed against the conviction and sentence. Jamool’s husband accused her of adultery, it said. The appeal is understood to take not less than six weeks before a response can be got from the court of appeal during which time Mrs Jamool will be kept in shackles, SIHA said. – (Reuters)