Nairobi, July 29 (DPA) A woman Sudanese journalist and United Nations worker could face up to 40 lashes Wednesday for wearing trousers.

Lubna Ahmed Hussein, a columnist and public information officer at the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), was arrested in Khartoum along with 13 other women in early July.

Ten of the other women were given 10 lashes for breaching Islamic law, but Hussein demanded a lawyer and delayed her trial.

She has invited local and foreign journalists to view her flogging should she be convicted.

Islamic law governs the north of Sudan, although the mainly Christian and animist South Sudan is exempt under a 2005 peace deal that ended a decades-long long civil war between north and south.