Sudan: Verdict due today in Sennar ‘Virgin’ case as appeal court upholds prison term and fine for mother

Report by Suleiman Siri for Radio Dabanga

The Sennar Court of Appeal, sitting at the city’s court complex under Judge Abdullah Omar, is due to hold a special session this Thursday morning to deliver its verdict in the case of the “Virgin”, the Sennar girl whose case has gripped public opinion, who Radio Dabanga will refer to as ‘the victim’. The session follows the Supreme Court’s acceptance of an appeal filed by the defence lawyers representing the victim. On Wednesday, the Court of Appeal upheld the lower court’s sentence against the victim’s mother, known as “the Virgin’s mother”, of six months in prison and a fine of SDG 5bn.

The court is due today to consider the case involving the gang rape of a woman in her twenties by three men, who allegedly threatened her and used violence against her in Sennar. The case has been closely followed for more than a year by Sudanese public opinion, amid hopes that the sentences will be reviewed, that perpetrators will receive deterrent punishment, and that confidence in the rule of law, an end to impunity, justice, and fairness will be strengthened.

The victim’s mother, who is herself serving a six-month prison sentence, has fought to assert her legal rights and seek justice. She had the rape established through a forensic medical examination, insisted that the police carry out arrest warrants against the three alleged perpetrators despite what she described as collusion and deliberate negligence in enforcing the law, and pursued one of them as far as Kassala state, where police refused to co-operate with her in arresting the third suspect.

The Sennar General Court, presided over by Judge Ismail Awad Rahma, had sentenced two of the perpetrators to three years in prison, beginning on 18 December 2025, after convicting them of rape under Article 149 of the 1991 Criminal Act. The third defendant was given 100 lashes. This was despite judicial confessions, a forensic medical report, and testimony from the forensic doctor himself confirming that the crime had been committed brutally and establishing the physical and sexual assault.

The ruling provoked widespread reaction among legal and human-rights circles, as well as in the media, because it was seen as lenient after more than three months of judicial proceedings. It also enraged the Victim’s mother, who appeared courageously in a live broadcast and, for the first time in Sudan’s history, publicly spoke about her daughter having been gang-raped by three men. She saw the ruling as a reward for the perpetrators rather than a decision to increase their punishment.

In response, Judge Ismail Awad Rahma filed a case against the Victim’s mother, accusing her of contempt of court. The case remains under consideration, with no ruling yet issued. A separate case was also brought against her, based on a complaint submitted by lawyer Mohammed Abdelrahman Qurashi, accusing her of defamation and damaging his reputation. Her eldest daughter is also facing a case brought by the same lawyer in connection with the matter.

Lawyer Abu Obeida Hassan published a statement on social media saying that the court had imposed a three-year prison sentence under Article 149, whereas, according to him, the law prescribed a single punishment for rape: life imprisonment. The judge, he argued, had no discretionary authority to reduce it, and departing from the prescribed sentence amounted to a violation of a mandatory legal provision that could not be subject to judicial interpretation.

Appeal court upholds sentence against the victim’s mother

In the same context, the Court of Appeal on Wednesday upheld the lower court’s sentence of six months in prison and a fine of SDG 5bn against the victim’s mother. The case had been brought against her by her lawyer, Mohammed Abdelrahman Qurashi, who accused her of damaging his reputation after she appeared in a live broadcast on social media and criticised the appeal he had filed in the victim’s case.

The victim’s family expressed deep regret on Wednesday after the Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the lower court, or court of first instance, sentencing the victim’s mother, Hawa Omar Osman Saleh, to six months in prison and a fine of 5bn Sudanese pounds. She has already served three months of the sentence.

A relative of the victim’s family told Radio Dabanga that the family was deeply disappointed that the Court of Appeal, presided over by Judge Dawoud Yahya Abdullah, had upheld the original ruling of six months in prison and a fine of SDG 5bn against the victim’s mother.

The case dates back to when the victim’s mother read the appeal submitted by the lawyer representing her daughter. She felt that the appeal was not in her daughter’s interests, and went to confront the lawyer about his position. He expelled her from his office, telling her that he had done so because the amount she had paid did not correspond to the level of his fees.

The victim’s mother then appeared in a live broadcast on social media to tell the public about what she regarded as the injustice inflicted on her by her lawyer. In the broadcast, she said the lawyer had written a weak appeal that favoured the perpetrators, and had introduced Article 146 of Sudan’s 1991 Criminal Act, concerning adultery, even though the case was entirely about the gang rape of her daughter, the victim, by three young men. The defendants had made judicial confessions and had been convicted under Article 149 of the 1991 Criminal Act.

The family relative told Radio Dabanga that they had hoped the ruling would be lenient and take the family’s circumstances into account, despite the three-month delay in responding to the lawyer’s appeal — a period equal to half the sentence already served by the victim’s mother.

The decision, she said, was shocking, and failed to take into account the human circumstances of an older woman suffering from chronic illnesses who herself needed medical treatment and special care. “We expected the court to count the three months she had already spent in prison, but …” she said.

She said the family, consisting of the mother and her two daughters, did not have even a quarter of the money required to pay the fine, and had no ability to settle it.

“At the very least, we expected the court to cancel the fine of 5bn Sudanese pounds because the family does not have this money and is living in very difficult circumstances,” she said, referring to the victim’s mother.

What the victim’s mother had done was natural, the relative said, even if she had made a mistake. She had behaved as any person, or any mother, might in the face of a tragedy such as the one that had befallen her daughter. Others had done worse, she added, but Hawa Omar was a grieving mother acting under the shock, pressure, and anguish caused by the catastrophe that had struck her daughter.

She added that Hawa was a mother whose daughter had been raped by three men. She had been devastated by what happened to her daughter, yet had found no justice despite turning to the law. They had hoped that the law would protect them.

The victim’s mother had regarded the lower court’s ruling as inadequate. Although the conviction for rape was correct, and had been established through the forensic doctor’s report and the perpetrators’ confessions, the judge had taken mitigating circumstances into account and imposed what she considered a lenient sentence of three years in prison.

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Editor’s note: This article has been translated from Arabic with the assistance of artificial intelligence, and subsequently reviewed and adapted by a human editor before publication.