Sudanese teen flogged for wearing 'indecent' skirt

The family of Silva Kashif, 16, plans to sue the police and the judge, said attorney Azhari al-Hajj who insisted that the verdict was in violation of the Sudanese law because the girl is a minor.

Kashif “is a minor, not a Muslim and did not have the right to get in touch with her parents” before the verdict was served, Hajj told AFP.

“These are violations of the law and that is why we plan on suing the police and the judge,” the lawyer added.

Kashif was strolling in a south Khartoum neighbourhood earlier this month wearing a knee-length skirt when a policeman arrested her and marched her to court. She was sentenced on November 21.

“The judge sentenced her to 50 lashes and she was immediately flogged. The whole thing lasted 30 minutes,” said Hajj, who is also a human rights activist. Sudan applies Islamic law in the Muslim north but it is not in force in the Christian and semi-autonomous south, which fought a two-decade war with the north that ended in 2005.

Kashif was the latest person targeted in Sudan on charges of violating a law against public indecency.

Kashif’s ordeal follows the high profile case of Lubna Hussein, a woman journalist who was sentenced to 40 lashes for wearing trousers deemed indecent. Hussein’s sentence was reduced to a fine, and she is now lobbying to change the morality laws.