Sudan child rapists spared noose
Two Sudanese sentenced to die for raping and murdering a
four-year-old girl escaped the hangman’s noose by just three minutes
after winning an appeal, local media reported on Wednesday.
Everything was on track for the prison execution in Khartoum and the
convicts had been weighed to calculate the traction on the rope when
Sudan’s highest legal authority ordered a delay, Al-Rai Al-Am newspaper
said.
“It happened three minutes before the scheduled hanging,” wrote the
newspaper quoting a judge who was due to observe the execution.
Lawyers for the defence managed to win the last-minute reprieve by
saying the rights of their clients were not respected during a trial
that saw massive media coverage and incited huge public interest.
They won the right to appeal at the last minute and a civil servant
from the constitutional court telephoned to stop the execution.
Sudan’s highest legal authority must now decide whether to authorise
another trial or reject the appeal and send the convicts back to the
gallows.
Mutassim Khairallah, 35, and Imad Tabben, 18, were found guilty of
raping and then suffocating Muram Awad Sadiq during the Muslim holiday
of Eid al-Fitr last October at the end of the Ramadan fast, before
dumping her body in a well.
They were sentenced to death in January by the central Khartoum
criminal court, then immediately dragged out to be publicly lashed 100
times in front of hundreds of cheering onlookers, as drivers stopped
their cars to watch.
Khartoum, Wednesday, AFP |