SUDAN: 8 DARFURIANS RECEIVE DEATH SENTENCE AFTER RAPING GIRL IN KASS

January 23, 2012: Four men and four women from Kass district, South Darfur were sentenced to death for raping a young Darfurian woman of 18 years on the 12 January 2012.
The girl from Greater Kass District was raped by four men, but the act was plotted by four women who were angry about the girl having an affair with a man. He was the estranged husband of one of the four women involved.
On 12 January, the young woman was approached in her house in Kass by two soldiers in civil dress and two civilians.
They told her that they had a arrest warrant to bring her to the police station in Kass. The father of the girl requested evidence of the paper, but the men refused. He was neither allowed to accompany her to the police station.
After a quarrel they took the girl forcefully. Three hours later she reappeared in her fathers house, bald with her hair shaved off, and said she was raped by three men in a valley in East-Kass district.
The father of the young woman filed a case with the police, as published by Radio Dabanga 14 January 2012. The police interrogated the men and brought the case immediately to the local court, pressurized by the angry Arab community (local Janjaweed).
During the court hearings it became clear that the girl had a relationship with a man who lived separate from his wife. The young woman admitted that they had two times consensual sexual intercourse.
The man also had told her that he would marry her as his next wife. The estranged wife, together with three other women, became so angry about his proposal to the girl that they plotted the rape case.
They paid the four men to punish the girl by sexual abduction. In court they admitted to have received 50 Sudanese pounds each. After the hearings the court sentenced on Sunday 23 January all the 8 involved (4 men and 4 women) to death.
Another nineth person (apparently a policeman) who had shaven the girl, was sentenced for five years imprisonment. The raped girl was lashed 100 times for having inappropriate sexual relations with the man, according to the court judge.
The man himself who had a relationship with the girl, was not convicted and did not appear in the court. Radio Dabanga learned that the convicted men and women might appeal against the verdict to the High Court in Nyala. (Source: radiodabanga.org, 26/01/2012)