After the court ruled against the Sudanese journalist Lubna Hussein, she refused to pay the fine, preferring to be jailed for a month as part of her campaign to abolish Article 152 of the Sudanese Penal Code.

The Sudanese police, in an acceleration of violations of human rights, arrested 48 activists, among them 3 badly hurt females. The arrests came while the activists were expressing support to the journalist and calling to abolish Article 152 of the penal Code.

Before the trial, the police forces attacked the activists supporting Lubna, they were standing at the Court. Later on, the court sentences Lubna to 500 Sudanese pounds fine, or a month in prison, in case she does not pay the fine. After the sentence, Khartoum court witnessed heavy presence of police officers, who fired the defense team, of Sudanese and Egyptian lawyers who came to support the journalist. The delegation asserted that the court listened to three witnesses of the Sudanese Public Order police, regarding the way the journalist was  dressed. There was obvious contradiction between their testimonies about the clothes of Lubna and whether to describe it as “improper” or not. They al agreed that it was too tight.

When the defense asked the judge to listen to defense witnesses, he refused and completely dismissed the testimonies, closing the hearing session without hearing the defense. After the return of the judge, he read the sentence against Lubna after talking about some laws in Nigeria, India, Somalis reaching the Sudanese law, that considers Lubna’s clothes as “improper” in accordance with Islamic Shariaa, asserting that Lubna is a Muslim citizen and the court became sure that she wore improper clothes, in violation to Article 152 of the Sudanese Penal Code.

The journalist refused to pay the fine, preferring to be jailed as a push to the abolishment of this Law for the sake of thousands of women.

The Egyptian NGOs supporting Lubna, stated that the last sentence is an exaggeration of the Sudanese regime against Human Rights Movement, and express the real crisis of the Sudanese regime. That regime must apologize to Lubna and all he Sudanese women counterparts who have been subjected to this barbaric unconstitutional penalty, which does not coincide with the new Sudanese constitution of 2005, nor with the Peace Accord that guaranteed freedoms and rights, nor with Sudan’s commitments based on the international agreements and conventions on human rights which had been signed and ratified by Sudan.