Introduction

On 18 January 1985 Mahmud Mohamed Taha was publicly executed in Khartoum on the grounds that he was an apostate and a heretic. Taha was the leader of a small radical modernizing movement in the Sudan, known as the Republican Brothers (or Republicans), founded in the late 1940s during the struggle for independence. For the previous two years the Republicans had been peacefully protesting against human rights violations that resulted from President Ja'far Nimeiry's programme of Islamicization that had begun in 1983. Their protest had included bringing several unsuccessful suits in the courts alleging that the introduction of a traditionalist version of Islamic law (Shari'a) was unconstitutional because it involved discrimination against women and non-Muslims.

Taha and some of his followers had been interned in 1983. They were released about eighteen months later, but Taha and some others were re-arrested in January 1985. Apostasy was not then an offence under Sudanese law. Taha was originally charged and tried for offences under the Penal Code and the State Security Act. However, the appellate court, without any serious trial of the issue, or even a pretence of due process, convicted Taha of heresy and apostasy and sentenced him to death.