Efforts to prevent a young Sudanese woman from being stoned to death after being convicted of adultery are hampered by the absence of government ministers in the country.
Proponents claim that the unnamed 20-year-old did not receive a fair trial and should be released. Her trial follows a military coup last year when General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan took control of the Government.
The young woman was found guilty of adultery by a court in Kosti city in June after being accused by her husband. A year after she and her husband divorced, she moved back in with her parents. In June 2022, a court in Kosti, White Nile State, Sudan, declared her guilty.
“We don’t have a minister who can intervene to demand her release,” said a government official, who agreed that the trial was “a joke.”
The head of the Ministry of Social Development’s Violence Against Women Unit, Sulaima Ishaq, told the BBC that she had been trying to convince officials in Khartoum that the trial was rigged but that the absence of government ministers had made that difficult.
Human rights groups claim that the woman—whose identity the BBC is concealing at the family’s request—was not provided with legal representation while in detention and was unaware of the charges against her.
“We have grounds to believe she was illegally forced into signing a confession by the police,” says Mossaad Mohamed Ali, executive director of the African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies (ACJPS).
The woman’s attorney, Intisar Abdala, expressed optimism to the BBC that the court will “do the right thing” and release her client after the appeal.
The death sentence is still in effect in Sudan for many hudud offences, which are those explicitly outlined by Allah in the Quran. There are severe punishments under Sudanese law, including flogging, amputation of hands and feet, hanging, and stoning.
Human rights organisations allege that the government’s 2015 pledge to end the use of stoning as a punishment has not been fulfilled.
“Even the most conservative politicians are against stoning,” Sulaima Ishaq told the BBC. “But things take a lot of time to change here and then feed through to the courts, and women are the ones who suffer.”
Hala Al-Karib, regional director for the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (Siha), said that Sudan’s adultery laws were “disproportionately applied to women”.
According to activists, a young woman named Intisar El Sherif Abdalla was the last person to have been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery. In 2012, after a campaign by Siha and Amnesty International, she and her four-month-old infant were released. Ms Al-Karib, though, said there may have been further incidents that missed detection.
“Feminists and human rights groups in the country have minimal resources, and there could well be hundreds of cases we are not aware of.”
A “public order” regulation that had previously restricted women’s behaviour and clothing in public was overturned by the transitional administration that gained power in Sudan following the 2019 uprising against President Omar al-Bashir. Since the coup in Sudan a year ago, the “morality police” who patrolled the streets to enforce this law have reportedly reappeared.
The junta reportedly rehired some Bashir allies after the coup.
“We were hopeful that Sudan’s transitional government would establish changes to Sudan’s legal framework, which continues to openly criminalise women and girls and contribute to their subordination and inequality,” said Hala Al-Kirab. “But we were naive.”
Sudan joined the United Nations Convention against Torture in 2021.
According to Mossaad Mohamed Ali of the ACJPS, “Under the Convention, torture is defined as causing a person intentional and intense suffering. “Stoning is one of the worst forms of torture.”
The sentencing of stoning has been deemed “cruel, inhuman, and degrading” by international and local NGOs that are campaigning for the woman’s release.
The 20-year-old has been kept for months in a women’s prison in White Nile State, with only her lawyer, Intisar Abdala, allowed to visit her.
“The young woman is in alright physical health but she is understandably very anxious. There’s not much more I can say as a woman lawyer who lives and works to help other women in a conservative region like Kosti,” she said.
Her parents didn’t abandon her; the girl was just an “ordinary and simple country girl from a very traditional and religious farming family,” she said.
“We are awaiting a judgement from the court of appeal but nobody can tell when that will come. Waiting is our only option.”
Proponents of the woman’s release have said they are open to international pressure.
“We are concerned that the appeal court will not rule in the young woman’s favour. We save women from these laws when the international community raises its voice and adds pressure on the Sudanese government, and that must happen again in this case,” said Hala Al-Karib.
A representative from the Sudanese Embassy in London said: “We are fully aware of this case and as far as we know, this is not the court’s final decision. We have contacted the justice authorities in Sudan in this regard, and we are awaiting their response.”
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