SCOTLAND’S Ukip MEP David Coburn has been criticised after he failed to vote against the death penalty during an EU debate about a Sudanese teenager due to be executed for killing her rapist.

Last week, almost all of Europe’s MEPs backed a motion reiterating the parliament’s “strong opposition to the use of the death penalty in all cases and under all circumstances” and calling on Sudan to “comply with the UN moratorium on the death penalty” and spare the life of 19-year-old Noura Hussein.

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Coburn was one of a handful who voted against. He told The National that, generally, he had “absolutely no moral objection to the death penalty”.

Labour MEP Catherine Stihler said Coburn had “sunk to a new low”.

Hussein was sentenced to death after she was convicted of killing her husband who, she says, raped her following a forced marriage.

Hussein’s family compelled her to wed when she was just 15, but she refused and ran away for three years. Her father forced her to go through with the wedding in April last year.

The teenager says that after the ceremony, three men held her down while her husband raped her.

A day later, when he tried to rape her again, Hussein stabbed him to death.

When she turned to her family for help, they contacted the police.

According to an appeal lodged with the Sudanese courts, Hussein had slashes to her hands, and bite marks in her shoulder.

Millions, including Harry Potter star Emma Watson, have backed an international campaign to overturn Hussein’s sentence.

At the end of last month, in an emergency debate about Hussein’s plight, MEPs were asked to back a motion opposing “the use of the death penalty in all cases and under all circumstances” as it violated human dignity and constituted “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”.

The second part of the motion appealed “to the Sudanese authorities to comply with the UN moratorium on the death penalty” and to ratify the Convention against Torture and the UN’s Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.

Coburn voted against both. Stihler said the Ukip politician’s views were “antiquated.”

“David Coburn’s ridiculous views are well-known, and sometimes it’s better just to ignore him,” she said.

“But he’s sunk to a new low by voting against an amendment which condemned the death penalty in all cases and under all circumstances.

“While the EU continues to move in a more progressive direction, in the UK we risk going backwards under a hard Brexit supported by people such as Coburn and Jacob Rees-Mogg, with their antiquated views.”

Coburn said he had “absolutely no moral objection to the death penalty”.

He went on: “Furthermore as a Ukipper and Brexiteer, I see no reason for a foreign power, namely the EU, to dictate to the UK whether it exercises the death penalty or not.

“In 1973, the UK joined a trading group of nations. It did not vote to join a country called Europe. We have been progressively conned into this idea that we are part of a country called Europe ever since. The UK has clearly voted to leave this trading bloc in the recent referendum.

“Ms Stihler has clearly not understood that matters such as the death penalty will be decided by the sovereign British Parliament and not an illegitimate foreign power which the UK and perhaps soon Italy, Hungary and Poland may soon be leaving.

“Perhaps she is listening to too many of Sturgeon’s havers?”