Sudan death sentences 'not safe'

Mohammed Taha escaped an assassination attempt in 2000

Amnesty International has questioned death sentences passed on 10 people for the murder of Sudanese newspaper editor Mohammed Taha in 2006.

Amnesty says the 10 include a boy who was only 15 at the time, and says the defendants were convicted on the basis of confessions obtained by torture.

There was a national outcry when Taha's decapitated body was found in a street in Khartoum after he was kidnapped.

The police investigation focussed on the Darfuri community in Khartoum.

Amnesty says the police rounded up 72 Darfuris and "reports suggest that nearly all of those arrested were beaten and otherwise tortured to obtain confessions".

Hanging

The human rights organisation points out that all but 19 of the 72 were after five months in detention.

Taha had courted controversy with some of his articles

All the defendants brought to trial retracted their confessions in court saying they had been extracted under torture.

But attempts by defence lawyers to have their clients examined by doctors for physical evidence of torture were disallowed.

However, the trial judge went on to acquit nine people, admitting that the evidence against them rested solely on confessions made under duress.

At the end of the nine-month trial the judges convicted the remaining 10 Darfuris, one of whom, named by Amnesty as Al-Tayeb Abdel Aziz, is still only 16.

Capital punishment in Sudan is normally carried out by hanging.

The men's lawyer, Kamal Omer, accused the court of being influenced by the political establishment and said the men would appeal against their sentences.

Controversial editor

Despite being an Islamist himself, Mr Taha - who edited the al-Wifaq newspaper - sparked angry demonstrations when in 2005 he reprinted an article questioning the roots of the Prophet Muhammad.

He was put on trial for blasphemy but the charges were later dropped.

Mr Taha had been the target of an assassination attempt five years previously after writing an article which criticised the ruling National Congress Party.

The BBC's Amber Henshaw in Sudan says the authorities believe he also angered Darfuris by writing articles questioning the morals of Darfuri women, just as aid agencies were documenting widespread rape in the region.

Despite his controversial past, thousands of weeping mourners attended Mr Taha's funeral in September 2006.

Many saw similarities with brutal killings by al-Qaeda militants in Iraq, our correspondent reports.