[Al Arabiya Latest] A Sudanese court on Wednesday sentenced 11 members of the Darfur rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) to death and acquitted five others for a 2008 attack on Khartoum. "We sentence them to the death penalty by hanging," judge Issam Ismail said after the individual verdicts were read out, to shouts of protest from the condemned men.Five defendants were found not guilty of the charges, which included trying to overthrow the government. The court referred one defendant to a juvenile court and another to mental hospital.
More than 70 rebels have now been sentenced to death for the shock attack in which more than 200 people were killed. None of those sentenced has yet been executed. The rebels drove hundreds of miles across desert and scrubland to reach the capital and were only a few kilometers from the presidential palace when government troops halted them.
Last year, the United Nations expressed concern over the trials in the Sudanese courts especially created for the case and urged Khartoum to abolish capital punishment. Defense lawyers have argued that the special courts are unconstitutional and have not guaranteed their clients' legal rights.
Under Sudanese law, any death sentence must be ratified by an appeal court and the high court. All death warrants must then be signed and approved by President Omar al- Bashir.
The JEM last month said it would no longer hold peace talks with the Sudanese government after Khartoum's expulsion of foreign aid agencies from the war-ravaged region.
It had signed an accord in the Qatari capital of Doha in February with Khartoum on a package of confidence-building measures, paving the way for substantive peace negotiations. But it said peace talks were no longer possible after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Bashir on March 4 for war crimes in Darfur.
The United Nations says that up to 300,000 people have died and more than 2.2 million have fled their homes since ethnic minority rebels in Darfur rose up against the regime in Feb. 2003. Sudan says 10,000 have been killed.