The sentencing came a day after a court prosecutor read out a letter by mother of John Granville, who worked with the US Agency for International Development (USAID), asking for the death penalty.

“The murder of a person is as illegal from shariah’s (Islamic law) point of view as it is in Sudanese criminal law,” the judge, Said Ahmed al-Badri, said when announcing the sentence.

The court had sentenced the men to death in June for killing Granville and his driver Abdel Rahman Abbas in January 2008, but the sentence was cancelled in August after Abbas’s father then forgave the men.

Under Islamic law, the victim’s family has the right to forgive the murderer, ask for compensation or demand execution.