Two allegedy adulterous women were recently sentenced to stoning deaths in North Sudan. The defendants had neither lawyers nor interpreters in a capital crimes trial that wasn’t even conducted in their first language.
The man charged in one of the women’s cases got off due to a lack of evidence that was for some reason sufficient enough to condemn the woman, who currently has her child with her in prison.
Reuters reports that Sudan’s penal code mandates execution by stoning for convicted adulterers. Single people caught having sex out of wedlock are subject to lashing.
Two years ago, a woman’s stoning sentence in western Darfur was “reduced” to lashing after activists launched a campaign on her behalf. Since the country seems unlikely to voluntarily clean up its human rights act anytime soon, here’s hoping Oprah, or Jesus, will intervene.
–Nicole McClelland
