Ten people were sentenced to death on Saturday in Sudan for the 2006 murder and beheading of a prominent journalist, a judicial source said. Amid tight security, a judge in the Bahri criminal court in Khartoum pronounced the verdict, which came at the end of a trial that lasted nine months, following a five-month police investigation.
The 10 accused, who belong to the Fur tribe from the troubled region of Darfur, were found guilty of the killing of Mohammed Taha Mohammed Ahmed, editor-in-chief of the pro-Islamist newspaper Al-Wifaq. The 10 did not react to the verdict while members of the victim's family shouted "long live justice."
Ahmed's decapitated body was found in the capital Khartoum in September 2006, a day after he was abducted by armed men from his home in north Khartoum. Ahmed, considered to be close to the Muslim Brotherhood, had strained relations with the government of President Omar al-Beshir, who came to power with the backing of Islamists.
He escaped an assassination attempt in 2000 after writing an article hostile to the ruling National Congress Party. The journalist was arrested in 2005 after being accused of writing an article on the family of the Prophet Mohammed, and publication of his newspaper was suspended by the Sudan authorities.
In his defence, Ahmed said it had been a misunderstanding and he was released, despite street demonstrations and radical Islamist groups demanding he be put to death.