Three suspected thieves were sentenced to amputation, hands to be chopped off

Three men who allegedly stole several gas cylinders may have their limbs chopped off after a Sudanese found them guilty of theft.

The trio were sentenced under cruel Islamic sharia laws that are being enacted in the country for the first time in almost a decade.

The suspects were found guilty of stealing 52 gas cylinders in Omdurman, the country’s most populous city north of the capital Khartoum.

Besides losing their hands, the men will also serve three years in prison and pay a further 2,000,000 Soudanese pounds (£2,800) fine.

The men are currently in Koper prison, the same facility where former president Omar al-Bashir is detained.

“Unfortunately, despite the political change in the country, nothing has changed in terms of the rights of the people, it was a change on the surface,” Samir Makeen, a lawyer representing the trio was quoted by The Guardian.

Bashir, a former dictator was removed from office in 2019 in an Arab spring protest.

Sudan incorporated amputation as a form of corporal punishment in 1983 under a series of Islamic law reforms.

The Africa Center for Justice and Peace Studies, a human rights organisation based in Uganda, condemned the sentencing and said the punishment was a form of state-sanctioned torture, a breach of Sudan’s human rights obligations, Daily Mail Online reported.

The rights group called on Sudanese authorities to overturn the amputation sentence and to guarantee a fair retrial.

The amputation sentencing also contradicts a UN Convention against Torture, which Sudan signed in 2021.

Source: cityreviewss