KUALA LUMPUR: A Malaysian Islamic court postponed the caning yesterday of two women convicted of lesbian sex as activists hoped it would give them time to stop the punishment being carried out.

The women, aged 22 and 32, were arrested in April by Islamic enforcement officers after they were found in a car in a public square in northern Terengganu state, one of the most conservative areas of the Muslim-majority country.

They were brought before an Islamic court and admitted to breaking a sharia law that forbids sexual relations between women and sentenced to six strokes of the cane each and fined 3,300 ringgit ($800).

The sentence was to be carried out Tuesday but Terengganu Sharia Court chief registrar Wan Abdul Malik Wan Sidek said it had been moved to September 3 for "technical reasons". - AFP