By REUTERS
A woman convicted of adultery has been sentenced to death by stoning and is being held with her 6-month-old baby in jail, activists said Wednesday, 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 percent” Islamic constitution, prompting concerns that the country would apply Islamic law more strictly after the secession a year ago of South Sudan, which is mostly non-Muslim.
A court in the capital, Khartoum, sentenced the woman, Laila Ibrahim Issa Jamool, 23, on July 10 to death by stoning for adultery, according to a Sudanese human rights activist, Fahima Hashim. The Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa, a women’s rights group, said it had assigned lawyers who had appealed the conviction and sentence. Amnesty International said that Ms. Jamool “was convicted solely on the basis of her confession and did not have access to a lawyer.” Floggings are a common punishment in Sudan for crimes like drinking alcohol and adultery, but sentences of stoning are rare.
Courtesy: The New York Times
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