A journalist arrested in Sudan for wearing trousers has become a symbol for women's rights across Africa.

AS THE morality police crowded around her table in a Khartoum restaurant to see what she was wearing, Lubna Hussein had no idea that she was about to become a symbol for womens rights in Sudan.

Lubna Hussein outside the Khartoum cafe where she was arrested for her way of dressing. Credit:Reuters

She had arrived at the Kawkab Elsharq Hall on a Friday night to book a cousins wedding party. She left less than an hour later under arrest as a trouser girl  humiliated in front of hundreds of people, then beaten around the head in a police van before she was hauled before a court to face a likely sentence of 40 lashes for the sin of not wearing traditional Islamic dress.

The officials who tried to humiliate her expected her to beg for mercy, as most of their victims do.