Sudan women 'lashed for trousers'
BBC NEWS
July 13, 2009
A group of Sudanese women has been flogged as a punishment for dressing "indecently", according to a local journalist who was arrested with them.
Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein, who says she is facing 40 lashes, said she and 12 other women wearing trousers were arrested in a restaurant in the capital, Khartoum.
She told the BBC several of the women had pleaded guilty to the charges and had 10 lashes immediately.
Khartoum, unlike South Sudan, is governed by Sharia law.
Several of those punished were from the mainly Christian and animist south, Ms Hussein said.
Non-Muslims are not supposed to be subject to Islamic law, even in Khartoum and other parts of the mainly Muslim north.
She said that a group of about 20 or 30 police officers entered the popular Khartoum restaurant and arrested all the women wearing trousers.
"I was wearing trousers and a blouse and the 10 girls who were lashed were wearing like me, there was no difference," she told the BBC's Arabic service.
Ms Hussein said some women pleaded guilty to "get it over with" but others, including herself, chose to speak to their lawyers and are awaiting their fates.
Under Sharia law in Khartoum, the normal punishment for "indecent" dressing is 40 lashes.
Ms Hussein
is a well-known reporter who writes a weekly column called
Men Talk
for Sudanese papers.
She also works for the
United Nations Mission in Sudan.
