The Sudanese Ministry of Justice said that it had received...

The Sudanese Ministry of Justice said that it had received a letter from the European Union urging the government to pardon five people who had been sentenced to death or cross amputations. The Sudanese minister of justice, Ali Muhammad Uthman Yasin, said on January 4 that he had received a letter on this issue from the Italian ambassador in Khartoum, who conveyed it to him on behalf the EU. The letter said it was expected that executions were to take place on January 5. Yasin said he would make further contacts with the chief justice so as to get more information about the these sentences and the persons on whom they had been passed to enable him establish whether rulings passed on these five people had exhausted all avenues of litigation and become final or not. He further said no one had the power to commute, pardon or change these sentences except the relatives or members of the family of the criminal's victim [presumably because they can demand to be paid blood money as a consequence of which execution could be withdrawn]. He said that the judiciary was independent and the state could not interfere with its rulings.