Three ‘thieves’ are sentenced to amputation and will have their hands hacked off for stealing under brutal Islamic laws in Sudan

• Sudan’s courts convicted the three men of stealing some 52 gas cylinders
• The brutal punishment is being enacted for the first time in almost a decade

Three men have been ordered to have their hands amputated for stealing under Sudan’s barbaric Islamic laws.

The brutal punishment is being enacted in the country for the first time in almost a decade.

Sudan’s courts convicted the three men of stealing 52 gas cylinders in the country’s most populous city of Omdurman, north of the capital Khartoum.

The sentence has worried many within the international community as the country continues to implement extreme laws under its military dictatorship.

In October 2021, the military coup saw Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdulla Hamdok removed and several inhuman and cruel laws reintroduced.

Protesters chant slogans in support of maintaining Islamic Sharia as a part of the draft constitution during a demonstration in the Khartoum East district of Sudan’s capital on July 17, 2020

Protesters march with banners in support of maintaining Islamic Sharia, Khartoum East district of Sudan’s capital on July 17, 2020

As well as the removal of their hands, the men have been ordered to spend three years in prison and have been fined 2,000,000 Soudanese pounds (£2,800).

The brutal verdict and sentencing was handed down some weeks ago but recently turned the heads of many concerned over the country’s extreme laws and democratic backsliding.

The men are currently in Koper prison in the north of the capital in Khartoum. This is the same prison where former president Omar al-Bashir continues to be detained following the military dictator’s removal from office in 2019.

The Guardian reported the three men’s lawyer, Samir Makeen, as saying: ‘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.’

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. 

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

It said the three men were ‘tainted with several irregularities such as trial without legal representation, failure of the court to explain to the accused the gravity and penalty of the offenses and the reliance of court on the confessions as the only evidence to convict the accused.’

Sudanese erect barricades as they protest against a military coup that overthrew the transition to civilian rule, on October 26, 2021 

Barricades are set ablaze as protesters demonstrate against a military coup that overthrew the transition to civilian rule, October 26, 2021 

The amputation sentencing also contradicts a UN Convention against Torture, which Sudan signed in 2021. Many of the country’s laws should have been rewritten following this but many cruel and inhuman punishments still remain. 

Islamic laws have been enforced in Sudan since 1982. Following the election of Sadiq al-Mahdi in 1986, the series of draconian laws were halted but later returned following a military coup in 1989.

The ruling by Sudan’s courts follows a military coup in the country in 2021 where Sundanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok was arrested. Some more progressive laws were introduced in the country under Hamdok’s government, such as the abolition of beating with a whip as a form of judicial punishment and the criminalisation of female genital mutilation.

But since the military coup, many brutal laws have been reintroduced.

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