UPDATE - Urgent Alert for Action: Sudan:
Woman Sentenced to Death by Stoning
13 February 2002Dear friends,
Thank you all for your efforts. This is an update on the case of Abok alfau Akok, who was sentenced to death by stoning by a criminal court in Sudan.
Please continue to send letters to the Sudanese authorities as the charges against her have not been dismissed.
In solidarity
Women Living Under Muslim Laws international solidarity network
The Sudanese Victims of Torture Group (SVTG), confirms that the case has been sent back to the lower court for new sentencing. The court of appeal ruled at the end of last month that the lower court should give the defendant a "rebuke" sentence, not capital punishment. Abok Alfa Akok, appealed on 3 January 2002. She is reportedly still in prison in Nyala.
The Sudanese Ambassador to the US, Khidir Ahmed, on Thursday 7 February 2002 informed Human Rights Watch that the appellate court has rejected the sentence on Abok and sent the case back to the trial court.
ROME, Feb 10 (AFP) -- Sudan's Supreme Court has overturned a death-by-stoning sentence imposed by a Sharia law court on a woman accused of adultery following international pressure, a Christian religious community announced here Sunday.
The Rome-based charitable community of Sant'Egidio said it had been informed late Saturday by the Sudanese government that the death sentence imposed under Sharia law on Abok Alfa Akok "has been reversed by the Supreme Court".
Sant'Egidio and other non-government organisations including Human Rights Watch had led pressure on Sudan, calling of President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir and members of his government to save the woman's life. Roman Catholic Cardinal Roberto Tucci had gone on Vatican Radio to call on the international community to intervene. Sant'Egidio said it was trying to confirm the reversal on Sunday.
The woman, a Christian member of Sudan's Dinka tribe, is unmarried and pregnant and was sentenced to death by a lower court for adultery, punishable by death under Sharia law imposed by the Islamic authorities in Sudan's South Darfur province. Sant'Egidio said the woman had no access to a defence lawyer under questioning, and had been unable to follow the court case, conducted in Arabic.
Islamic law applies to all residents of the northern states regardless of their religion. Sudan has been wracked by civil war between the northern Muslim government in Khartoum and rebels in the mainly Christian and animist south since independence in 1956.
A 35-year-old Nigerian woman is appealing a similar sentence imposed by Islamic authorities in northern Nigeria after an international outcry.
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