**A Sudanese woman charged with dressing indecently for wearing trousers has been prevented from travelling abroad.**Lubna Hussein says she tried to leave Sudan on Tuesday to visit Lebanon where she had been invited to appear on a television programme.
She says an airport official said her name had been put on a blacklist last Friday, the day she was invited to France by President Nicholas Sarkozy.
If convicted in a month’s time, she could face up to 40 lashes.
Ms Hussein resigned from a UN job that would have given her immunity, indicating she wants her trial it to become a test case for women’s rights in Sudan.
Ms Hussein said she was going to Lebanon to participate in a talk show hosted by Al-Arabiya television.
“If the intent is to prevent me from speaking or censor my words… they are then naive, because I can speak on the phone, through satellite, anytime,” Ms Hussein told the Associated Press news agency.
Under a 2005 peace deal between the mainly Muslim north and the largely Christian south, Sharia law is not supposed to be applied to non-Muslims living in the capital.
The BBC’s James Copnall in the capital, Khartoum, says it is not that unusual to see women - both Muslim and non-Muslim - wearing trousers in the city.
Ms Hussein says she has done nothing wrong under Sharia law, but could fall foul of a paragraph in Sudanese criminal law that forbids indecent clothing.