Cross amputation in the time of the revolution government
H.Al-Karib
What if Moaz Abdul Majeed Ismail, a twenty-one-year-old boy, was my son? What if it was my friend's son or my neighbor's son? Or a brother to my co-worker? Moaz is a young Sudanese man who makes his living from a small drum in the central market in Khartoum. A pallet with biscuits, sweets, battery stones, pins and all the little things scattered in the pallets that crowd our markets crowded with people looking for a livelihood in various ways.
One morning in June 2020, a passerby caught the attention of some destitute boys, who were hanging around the central market, carrying a mobile phone and a small bundle of money. The boys attacked the owner of the mobile and the money using a penknife and stole the money (35 thousand pounds) and the mobile device and disappeared in the crowded market. When the police appeared, he only found Moaz sitting in front of his pallet, so he was forcibly arrested and accused of the crime of looting “according to his statements.”
Moaz and millions like him bear on a daily basis the violations of the justice establishment and the police based on the stereotyped image of the thief in Sudanese society. That stereotyping that was established by the Sudanese legal system and was exported to the societal awareness, so that the thief has a color and appearance. The court sentenced Moaz to three years in prison without being told that he had a right to legal aid.
Moaz's mother submitted a grievance request to the judges of the Court of Appeal, and for the second time Moaz was not provided with any legal support. Using Article 168 of the Criminal Code, the appellate judges took advantage of the political and moral support created by the July 2020 Miscellaneous Amendments Act for Inhuman Punishment. Although these amendments raised the threshold for apostasy, but at the same time, the hudud penalties found in the law of criminal weights were established in force, along the lines: “We satisfy the slanderers, but we do not stir up the weights.” On this basis, the judge of the Court of Appeal decided that Moaz’s crime was “encouragement” and sent their recommendation to cross amputation to the judge of the Court of First Instance, who sentenced Moad to “cross amputation/right hand and left leg,” without the presence of a lawyer or explaining to Moaz his legal right for the third time in June 2021.
Cross amputation over a young seller in Tabliyeh
The first question: Let us suppose the fact that Moaz is a thief, he stole the 35,000 Sudanese pounds and the mobile device. Does he deserve such an inhuman punishment and the limit of moharebeh and “an eternal resurrection”??
A second question: What if Muadh was originally from Damer, or from Dongola or from the buildings? What if Muadh Ismail was from Taif or Riyadh, or if his father was a doctor, a specialist, and a mother, a university professor or organization director, and he studied at the university in Europe? What if the mother of a merchant is from Omdurman or an employee? I made a mistake and stole 35 thousand and mobile phones for any reason related to the distortions and fluctuations of life that occur to humans, those mistakes we make because of poverty, stubbornness, nothingness, loss or psychological imbalance. Is it reasonable that a penalty for 48 dollars mobile is cross amputation/ cutting right hand and left leg ??
Moaz Abdel Majid Ismail is now in the death row in Kober Prison in Khartoum as a model of the misery of the Sudanese state and the continuation of historical darkness, chained to the chains in his hands and feet, awaiting an unjust sentence and a heinous violation of his right as a human being and as a Sudanese citizen. However, despite the bad situation, the efforts of a number of conscientious lawyers succeeded in communicating with him and his family and they adopted his case.
The most important question here is, how does a government that brought the sacrifices of the poor and the marginalized and protects and still protects itself with their bodies, as long as it has used those bodies as human shields, accepts itself from continuing the same oppression, injustice and inhumane violations against which the Sudanese people have repeatedly revolted.
The voice of the martyr Mahmoud Muhammad Taha is now ringing in my ears, clear and clear for those who want to hear and learn from the legacy of enlightenment and awareness in Sudan:
“I have repeatedly stated my opinion, in the laws of September 1983, that they are contrary to Sharia and Islam. More than that, it distorted Sharia, distorted Islam, and alienated it. In addition, it was developed, and exploited, to terrorize the people, and drive them into complacency, by humiliating them. Then it threatened the unity of the country. .. “.to his last famous saying.
Margins:
● These inhumane punishments were enacted through the laws of September 1983 AD. They are laws issued by the dictator Jaafar Nimeiri, according to which he announced the Islamic Sharia and installed himself as an imam over Muslims. He was assisted in its formulation and implementation by a group of Islamists headed by Dr. Hassan al-Turabi.
● Large sectors of the Sudanese people were not satisfied with and opposed to these laws, especially since they had opposed the constitution and the Addis Ababa Agreement that was signed between the north and the south. Its loudest opponent in Sudan was Professor Mahmoud Muhammad Taha, and he produced a publication in which he opposed these laws and called them (September Laws) instead of (Islamic Sharia Laws), and this term was widely accepted and spread among the people. With the same laws, Professor Mahmoud Muhammad Taha was tried and many Sudanese were dismembered on charges of theft or partisanship, as those laws were used in the heart of the confident martyr Sabah Al-Khair.
● Al-Wathiq Sabah Al-Khair, a resident of the city of Bahri, entered the school and read there until the third grade, then worked as a correspondent for the Waburat Department. He enlisted in the army at the infantry school in Karary, then left the army and worked in a number of marginal jobs. Was solidified at the age of 22 in June 1984
● On January 18, 1985, the martyr Mahmoud Muhammad Taha was executed on charges of apostasy, and he was 76 years old at the time
● On April 6, 1985, the dictator Jaafar Nimeiri was overthrown in the wake of the April 1985 uprising.
● In February 2013, the defunct government of the National Congress cut off 30-year-old Adam Al-Muthanna in a dispute. According to the court, he was involved in an armed robbery on the borders of North Kordofan and East Darfur in 2008.
● On June 23, 2021, the Criminal Court of Extension South in Khartoum, headed by Judge “Elissa Hashem,” sentenced Moaz Abdel Majid Ismail (21 years old), according to the directives of the Court of Appeal, to cut off the dispute (the limit of enmity) in accordance with Article 168 “Harba” which is stipulated in the Criminal Code. Sudanese in 1991, following his mother’s plea for a three-year prison sentence reduction after being convicted of the crime of looting the sum of 38,000 Sudanese pounds (equivalent to 48 US dollars) and a mobile phone.
● The Law of Miscellaneous Amendments issued by the Ministry of Justice in July of the year 2020, emphasized the imposition of hudud and inhumane penalties in full, and Article 170 (amended) even stipulated that a special law be issued to determine the quorum of the hunch robbery. According to the statements of the Minister of Justice Nasr El-Din Abdel Bari in a television interview on July 12, 2020 about the law of various amendments that kept the punitive penalties, he said, “We only did what we did and the criminal law complied with the constitutional document, we did it to achieve justice, justice means not discriminating between people On what basis?” In the same meeting, the minister justified the abolition of the crime of apostasy from the law, saying, based on what he said: “An old debate about the criminalization of leaving Islam.”
● It is noticeable that the Sudanese legislator is selective, random, and lazy in dealing with religious texts to abolish or confirm crimes and inhuman punishments. Where the transitional government was subject to the sway of fundamentalism and extremism and neglected the jurisprudence of religious reform that aimed to harmonize between religious beliefs and the human rights system, like most of the Muslim-majority countries, which concluded that the provisions of the border are linked to a specific temporal and social context, as the development of humanity requires development in provisions, and an example of this Disrupt provisions relating to the enslavement of men and women.
● The Sudanese transitional government’s continuation of the approach of adopting inhuman and degrading punishments such as amputation of the hand and amputation other than (hand and foot) execution, crucifixion and flogging as an end, and the reluctance to reform the justice and security systems confirms that the Sudanese people are still governed by the system of laws of September 1983 or the laws of “the Kaizan system”, which During the previous forty years, the Sudanese people revolted against it twice, the first in the April 1985 uprising and the second in the glorious December 19 April Revolution.