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Sudanese woman abruptly freed from prison-for-pants sentence

Sep 8, 2009 10:29 am By Marisol

Hussein saw it as a chance to report on prison conditions; that undoubtedly made some people in Khartoum nervous. And the case is so high-profile that they couldn’t just make her disappear. An update on this story. “Pants-Wearing Woman Freed in Sudan,” by Jeffrey Gettleman for the New York Times, September 8:

NAIROBI, Kenya — The Sudanese female journalist who was convicted of violating her country’s decency laws for wearing a pair of green slacks in public was released from jail on Tuesday, though she’s not exactly sure why.

Lubna Hussein, the journalist, was jailed on Monday after refusing to pay a fine. Under Islamic law, she had faced up to 40 lashings, which instantly turned her case into something of an international sensation. Mrs. Hussein said that she did not pay the fine — approximately $200 — though a Sudanese journalist organization may have.

Sudan is partially ruled by Islamic law which calls for women to dress modestly. On Tuesday, Mrs. Hussein said, “I will keep wearing the trousers. I won’t be affected by the court. This is my normal life.”

She vowed to appeal the sentence and on Monday, she walked into the courtroom for her hearing in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, wearing the same pair of loose-fitting green slacks that she had been arrested in.

Manal Awad Khogali, one of her lawyers, said the judge hearing the case had called only police witnesses to testify and refused to allow Mrs. Hussein — who had pledged to use her trial to bring attention to women’s rights in Sudan — to defend herself.

“He didn’t give us a chance,” Mrs. Manal said.

After the trial was over, Mrs. Hussein, a 34-year-old widow, seemed defiant as ever. “I will not pay a penny,” she told The Associated Press.

The judge had threatened to jail her for one month if she did not pay the fine. But according to The A.P., Mrs. Hussein said flatly: “I would spend a month in jail. It is a chance to explore the conditions in jail.”

On Monday night, after refusing her lawyers’ advice to pay, Mrs. Hussein had been whisked off to prison, though her lawyers said that in the coming days a committee formed for her defense might pay the fine and free her.

But another organization seems to have beat them to it. Mohieddin Titawi, chairman of the journalists’ union, said his group had paid the fine because it had a responsibility to “protect journalists when they are in prison,” Reuters reported. His organization is seen by many journalists as having links to the government, the news agency said.

Sudan is partly governed by Islamic law, which calls for women to dress modestly. But the law is vague. According to Article 152 of Sudan’s penal code, anyone “who commits an indecent act which violates public morality or wears indecent clothing” can be fined and lashed up to 40 times.

It is to the government’s advantage to keep it vague. They have wide latitude to bring charges and impose punishments, but plausible deniability when defending the letter of the law to outsiders.

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