In a case of the first of its kind in Sudan, a Sudanese court sentenced a 50-year-old man to two months in prison and confiscated his mobile phone and fined 50,000 pounds (about 8,000 US dollars) for publishing information on social networking sites. , Said they were from the Darfur region involved in the killing of a Sudanese woman.
The Sudanese, Adiba Farouk, disappeared in mid-July, amid conversations about her abduction from the trafficking ring and the sale of organs, and accounts on social networking sites reports of other similar cases, creating widespread panic and political and media controversy.
After the news spread, the Sudanese police held several press conferences and issued statements denying the rumors as a threat to social security and threatened to arrest and bring the perpetrators to trial.
After Farouk's body was found floating on the Nile River, and the results of the medical autopsy showed signs of murder, police began searching for the culprit. But one of the relatives of the deceased published a recorded audio tape, in which he announced the arrest of the accused from the Darfur region, demanding the people of the deceased to avenge.
The "Voice of the National Security and National Intelligence" (SSSI) was sued by the Sudanese National Intelligence and Security Services (SIS) to pursue the source, and it moved legal proceedings against it, claiming to mislead the public and incite the victims. To take revenge.
The security also considered that the section deprives the people of Darfur of their human, moral and religious rights, and the police denied the statement in the section about the arrest of the accused originally.
In such cases, the accused used to deny that they had been charged with social networking sites for piracy. However, the accused admitted to recording and broadcasting the audio clip. He confirmed to the judge that he had done so in good faith, stating that it was a public opinion case. Darfur.The ruling, which will turn into a precedent, is based on the fact that the accused violated legal provisions relating to the publication of untrue false news, breach of public safety, incitement of hatred and strife between tribes and sects, as well as derogation from the prestige of the state.
Despite the insistence of the judge on the severity of the sentence, the defense of the accused requested the court to commute the sentence, taking into account the circumstances of the accused, who supported his small family of six children and his mother and six sisters, was the court's response to these reasons.
In a related context, according to official statistics, the number of cases of informatics crimes before the courts, in 2017, reached about 10 cases, but there are about a thousand cases remained in the competent prosecution, did not reach the court. It is the most widely disseminated false news, defamation, extortion, and threat, in addition to material fraud and privacy violations.As a result, the Sudanese government enacted a new telecommunications law, passed by the parliament last December, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years or a fine (or both penalties) for anyone who proves that the news is fabricated, By court order.
The government is deliberating on other amendments in another law, the Information Law. These amendments make it simple to inform the husband or wife of the other's phone without the permission of a crime, punishable by one year imprisonment.
The new amendments to the bill also set a 7-year sentence for other cybercrime offenses, such as extortion or threats through social networking sites.
The lawyer and political activist, Shata al-Hajj, who represented the defense of the accused in the case, refused to comment on the "new Arab" on the prison sentence, the fine and the confiscation against his client.
He said that sanctions and extremism in general would not limit the spread of rumors and other information crimes, in light of the existence of an incubating and fertile environment produced by economic, living and political pressures, restrictions on public freedoms, lack of transparency and dissemination of real information.
On the other hand, the expert in the fields of informatics crimes, Abdel Moneim Abdelhafiz, believes that the society believes that the strictness of judgments, in the crimes of informatics, leads to the low level of these crimes.
"The size of the crimes should not be underestimated or justified, especially if we know that the acts often violate the privacy of Sudanese families," Abdulhafiz said.
In the same context, the editor of the newspaper "the press", Mohamed Hamid Juma, that the verdict issued yesterday and other possible penalties contained in the communications law and cyber crimes can limit the dissemination of rumors and the general mitigation of information crimes, pointing out that the ruling on the right The accused will henceforth promote the culture of recourse to the law and the silence of those exposed to such crimes.
Gomaa agreed with Attorney Shateh Al-Haj on the need for all official and non-official organizations to adopt the method of transparency and dissemination of real information through the social media itself, which closes the door to any other predictions or speculation in controversial topics between the public.
