In Sudan a woman was given 75 lashes of the whip by police after Sudanese judgment found her guilty of marrying a man without her father’s consent on Tuesday, her lawyer and rights activists said.
The woman, is a resident of the war-torn Darfur region, she was flogged at a police station in Omdurman, the twin city of Khartoum, after having served a six-month prison sentence.
This incident is just a week after in another part of Sudan the courts condemned to death a teenager for killing her husband who had allegedly raped her.
“She completed her six months in jail and today she was flogged 75 times” as ordered by the court, lawyer Azza Mohamed Ahmed told AFP.
The woman was put on trial after the father refused to approve her marriage to a man of her own choice.
“She and the man then got married and lived together for a year,” the lawyer said, adding that the couple now have a two-month-old baby.
“Her family then filed a case against her, accusing her of living with a man illegitimately and of having sex outside of marriage.”
According to Muslim law within the country one cannot marry without their father’s consent as a result her husband was sentenced to two years in prison.
“Today her punishment is complete,” the lawyer said, adding that the woman was released and would stay at the house she lived with her husband.
Amnesty International, contacted by AFP, confirmed the woman’s conviction and flogging, saying it would follow-up the case.
A women’s rights activist witnessed the flogging.
“I was holding her baby in my hands as the ordeal unfolded in front of me,” said Tahani Abbas, a member of Don’t Oppress Women, a Sudanese NGO.
“This was the most painful sight, especially for a women’s rights activist,” she told AFP.
Last Thursday, another court sentenced to death Noura Hussein Hamad for killing a man she had been forced to marry at the age of 16.
According to Amnesty, Hammad, now 19, stabbed her husband in self-defence after he raped her.
But a court found her guilty of “intentional murder”.
Activists have stepped up a campaign against forced unions and the marriage of underage girls, a common phenomenon in Sudan where the law allows marriage from the age of 10.