A young Sudanese woman facing execution for killing her husband as he tried to rape her has had her death sentence quashed.
Lawyers for 19-year-old Noura Hussein announced the news on Tuesday afternoon and said the verdict for premeditated murder had also been quashed.
The appeal court in Khartoum has found her guilty of manslaughter and has sentenced her to five years in prison.
As Hussein was told of the news, celebration broke out in the prison in Omdurman, as the women inmates began ululating.
Her supporters, who organised a petition on her behalf, said they were “elated” by the decision. Hussein, who was forced to marry at 16, had been sentenced to death by hanging. Hussein became the focus of a global campaign with a series of petitions in her support reaching a million signatures.
High-profile figures joined the campaign to get the sentence overturned, among them the model Naomi Campbell, actors Mira Sorvino, Emma Watson and Rose McGowan, and Julia Gillard, the former Australian prime minister.
The case has underlined the issue of forced marriage, including of minors, and women’s rights in the Sudanese courts system.
According to her supporters Hussein had been with her husband for six days when he raped her with the assistance of his brother, another relative, and a witness, who held her down.
When he attempted to rape her again the following day, she stabbed him before fleeing to her own parents’ house, who handed her over to police.
In a statement, Hussein said she had picked up the knife with the idea of killing herself. Under Sudanese law, the repeated sexual assaults by her husband were not considered rape because Hussein was his wife.
One of her lawyers, Ahmer Sibair, said forced marriage was a problem in Sudan.
“Marrying girls and women without their consent is common in Sudan, and it causes so many problems. They marry a girl as a child and without her consent, and so many of them lost their chances to be educated.”
Hussein told the Guardian from the prison in Omdurman last month that if she was pardoned, she planned to study.
“When I get out of here, I want to study law to defend other oppressed people,” she said.
Activists said Hussein’s legal team had been harassed by authorities. Her lawyers were stopped from holding a press conference by state security last week.
Judy Gitau, a human rights lawyer for activist group Equality Now, in Nairobi, said: “We are very pleased that Noura has won the court appeal against her death sentence, and we celebrate it as a positive step for both her, and women and girls generally in Sudan. However, sentencing her to five years in prison and a fine for defending herself against her rapist is still not acceptable and we are looking at next steps to support her.”
Last week, Hussein’s lead attorney, Adil Mohamed Al-Imam, was barred from holding a news conference.
After years of isolation, Sudan, a designated terrorism sponsor whose leader has been indicted on war crimes charges, has in recent years made efforts to improve its relations with western powers.
In January the US government eased sanctions against Khartoum as a step towards normalising relations.
There have been intensifying contacts between Khartoum and the European Union too, prompted largely by concerns over immigration.