A lawyer says a Sudanese court has overturned a death sentence against a young woman convicted of killing her husband, who she says was raping her.
Al-Fateh Hussein, a lawyer for 19-year-old Noura Hussein, said late Tuesday that the appeals court in Khartoum has replaced the death penalty with a five-year sentence.
He says the court also ordered that her family pay 337,000 Sudanese pounds ($18,700) in “blood money” to her late husband’s relatives.
A criminal court convicted Hussein of killing her husband and sentenced her to death in May, a year after the killing. The sentence sparked protests and an online campaign under the hashtag #JusticeForNoura.
Her lawyers say she was forced into marriage by her parents three years ago and had initially fled her husband.
Hussein has been held in a women’s prison since May 2017.
Her death sentence triggered a campaign calling for the throwing out of Hussein’s sentence, while her lawyer filed an appeal against the lower court’s ruling.
At 16, Hussein was forced by her parents to marry her cousin, according to activists.
Members of the #JusticeForNoura campaign said Hussein was forced to sign the marriage contract in 2014. She then fled to a relative’s house in eastern Sudan before the wedding ceremony was completed.
Her father allegedly tricked her into returning to her husband. After six days of Hussein refusing his advances, he raped her with the help of family members who held her down, according to campaigners.
When Hussein’s husband attempted to rape her again, she stabbed him to death before returning to her family, who then handed her over to police.
Amnesty International, which had been part of a “Justice For Noura” campaign, confirmed Hussein’s death sentence had been scrapped.
“Thank you to over 400,000 of you who demanded JusticeForNoura & helped make this happen!” the UK-based group tweeted on Tuesday
