Most people have never heard of Nagmeldin Abdallah. It is impossible to reach him in the eastern Sudanese prison where he waits for word on an appeal that may save his life. But Abdallah has achieved minor notoriety in activist circles.
Sudan’s complex death penalty statutes may never have gained international attention were it not for Abdallah, who claims he was 15 when he was sentenced to death for killing a vegetable seller in 2003.
The problem boils down to how seriously the world should take judicial sentences that Sudanese officials say are not carried out. Sudan courts may sentence juveniles to death, but officials here say they never have carried out such a penalty. They prefer instead to release a minor to his parents on appeal.
This routine, though, leaves human rights groups concerned. First, merely sentencing a minor to death violates international treaties to which Sudan is a signatory. Second, they say, sentencing a minor to death may someday lead to actually killing one.
That is where Abdallah comes in.
Amnesty International decries Abdallah’s conviction and mentions him often as part of a campaign aimed at ending the death penalty in Sudan.
But Sudanese officials say Abdallah was an adult when he committed his crime; he signed a confession stating that he was 20 at the time of the murder. Moreover, they say Sudan’s peculiar jumble of ex-British colonial laws and Sharia code make it hard for anyone in this land to actually be put to death.
Sudan’s Constitution, under Article 36.2, appears to allow minors to be executed for “hudud” crimes, which include murder, adultery and apostasy, leaving Islam for another religion or for a secular lifestyle. Sudan officials, though, insist that the truth is lost in translation.
The English translation states: “The death penalty shall not be imposed on a person under the age of eighteen or a person who has attained the age of seventy except in cases of retribution or hudud.”
“It is confusing,” Fathi Khalil, president of the Sudan Bar Association, told IPS. “But it is clear to us in the Arabic translation that minors cannot be executed.”
Leading rights groups, including Amnesty, denounce the Constitution for allowing the execution of minors and list the names of four youths who they say have been sentenced to die by the state.
Amnesty charged in a 2005 report that minors are “convicted to death” in Sudan contrary to four international human rights treaties that prohibit juveniles from being sentenced to death or executed.
An IPS investigation was unable to find evidence that the ultimate penalty has been used on any juvenile in Sudan, including the four named by Amnesty.
That is because Sudanese officials said that minors may be “sentenced” to death in Sudan, but are not actually killed. Upon appeal, if it is proved they are minors, they are released into the care of their parents or given reduced sentences.
Khalil said he believed Sudan is the victim of a smear campaign aimed at Islamic nations. The West views Islam as more cruel and unjust than other religions, he said.
“Amnesty International does not like Sudan,” he said. “They write about Sudan without coming here.”
Amnesty representative Theo Murphy told IPS via email that the organisation could not provide the names of any minors who had been executed, only the names of the four youths who had been sentenced to death.
Other rights groups have charged similar abuses, but they, too, are unable to prove that minors are executed.
Amir Mohamed Suleiman, a lawyer with the Khartoum Centre for Human Rights and Environmental Development, said his organisation has documented the execution of minors.
When asked to produce documents to back up those claims, however, Suleiman said his colleague who handles the matter is in Britain. He shuffled through a mound of files on his desk and concluded it would take weeks to find her records of executions of minors.
He did recall the case of a 15-year-old southern Sudanese girl in Darfur who was sentenced to death for adultery. Upon appeal, Suleiman said, her sentence was reduced to 75 lashes.
Attorney Shakir Hassan, a former Ministry of Justice employee, said this type of appeal is common. “Any doubt [about age] is interpreted in the favour of the minor. If there is suspicion, the sentence is reduced,” Hassan told IPS.
Hassan and Khalil both admitted that mistakes can be made and minors may be hung. “Every country everywhere makes mistakes,” Khalil said. “What happens in England or in America?”
Amnesty officials counter that because all systems are fallible, the death penalty should be abolished worldwide, including the United States. England abolished capital punishment in 1965.
Sudanese officials’ claims that others are exaggerating the problem appear to have some basis.
Suleiman and a colleague, Ali Agab, insisted that the execution of minors is commonplace in Sudan. Weeks later, after repeated requests by IPS for the names of minors executed, Agab asked IPS to retract his prior statements.
Suleiman later sent IPS an e-mail with the name of a youth, Abel Aziz Omer Hamed, whom he said had been executed in December 2005. He offered no further details on the youth and was unavailable for comment following the e-mail message.
Tellingly, not all rights groups condemn Sudan. Some offer different interpretations of the death-penalty quagmire, and even Sharia law in Sudan.
Ghazi Suleiman, widely recognised as the godfather of human rights in Sudan, has spent much of his career in and out of prison for decrying rights abuses. Still, he defended Sudan’s legal code, claiming that Sudan is governed not by Sharia code, but British Common Law, the remnants of colonisation that ended in 1956.
In fact, Sudan’s penal code has 185 sections, but only four, dealing with penalties for murder, adultery and theft, are Islamised.
“In my lifetime as a professional lawyer, I have not seen a case where a youth is executed,” said Ghazi Suleiman. “We don’t have Sharia law.”
Ghazi Suleiman currently is defending a group of southern Sudanese men on trial for their lives after allegedly instigating a May 2005 riot that left 14 police officers and up to 20 civilians dead.
The defendants included three boys under the age of 18, who Ghazi Suleiman said were released into the care of their parents immediately after they were proven to be minors.
That is why Nagmeldin Abdallah appears to have become the face of injustice in Sudan — because he slipped through the cracks.
Despite the right to counsel under Sudanese law, Abdallah initially stood trial in May 2003 without a lawyer. Following the murder, Abdallah told authorities he had lost his birth certificate and he was examined by a doctor who determined Abdallah was an adult.
In a signed statement to police Abdallah swore he was 20 years old and confessed to stabbing the 35-year-old victim. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 2003.
Abdallah’s father launched an unsuccessful appeal, while his son sat on death row. In November 2003 Abdallah met Rifaat Makkawi, a lawyer working with the People’s Legal Aid Centre.
Abdallah told Makkawi that he was only 15 years old at the time of the crime, that he had not been represented and that his confession had been extracted after he was tortured.
Abdallah admitted he had a motive for the murder. He claimed that the man he killed had sexually abused him, a fact he did not mention at the trial because his father was present.
“According to this culture, he is not a criminal. If someone sexually abuses you, I would have done the same thing,” Makkawi said.
Makkawi has since set out to prove that Nagmeldin was a minor to save his client from death.
“When it came to the appeal court they started trying to use the age [defence], said Abdul Moneim Taha, head of the Sudan Advisory Council for Human Rights. “A birth certificate was submitted to the appeal court only after the initial trial.”
Here the accusations and counter-accusations began.
Moneim charged the certificate is a fake; that it was issued only after Abdallah’s father swore in an affidavit that his son was born on 7 November 1987.
Mekkawi said the certificate is a copy from state files and that prosecutors have refused to even look in state records for Abdallah’s original birth notice.
Moneim said a panel of three doctors determined that Abdallah was an adult.
Mekkawi said his client was examined by a single doctor who merely looked at his body to determine he was an adult.
Abdallah’s case is currently under review by the nation’s Constitutional Court. His fate now hangs in the balance. — IPS