Update:
Meriam Ibrahim was freed again yesterday after being re-arrested as she tried to leave Sudan.
Meriam has taken refuge at the US embassy in Sudan’s capital Khartoum, her lawyer said.
“She is in the US embassy now,” Mohanad Mustafa said on Thursday, The Guardian reports. “She and her husband think this is a safe place for them,” he added.
Meriam had tried to travel to the US after her release from death row in Sudan, but had been detained by about 40 security agents detained her, her husband and two children, 2-year-old Martin and two-week-old Maya, the BBC reports.
Abdullahi Alzareg from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the BBC she had been arrested because she did not have the correct travel documents.
Previously, Mamamia reported: Meriam Ibrahim released from prison.
Meriam Ibrahim, the Sudanese woman sentenced to death for apostasy while pregnant has been freed, after the Supreme Court overturned her verdict.
Meriam Ibrahim walked out of prison in Khartoum yesterday. She had been sentenced to 100 lashes and death by hanging because she would not renounce her Christian faith.
She has been taken to safe house. “Her family had been threatened before and we are worried that someone might try to harm her,” said Mohaned Mostafa, one of her team of lawyers.
Her release was announced yesterday by the Sudanese state media.
Previously Mamamia reported…
She’s spent months with her legs in shackles so heavy, they make it difficult to move.
She gave birth last month in a squalid prison hospital, her legs reportedly still in chains.
She was told she had only two years to nurse her baby girl before being hanged.
But now Meriam Ibrahim, the Sudanese Christian woman sentenced to death last month for refusing to give up her religion, may have a chance at life.
The 27-year-old doctor — who gave birth to her baby girl, Maya, in a prison hospital last month and also has an 18-month-old son, Martin– has reportedly appealed against the sentence.
The appeal demands her release and says the court that tried her committed “procedural errors,” her lawyer Eman Abdul-Rahim told the AP news agency on Wednesday.
Meanwhile a new video showing Meriam with her two children at the hospital where she gave birth has been obtained by AP press agency. It shows her breastfeeding the baby on a bed, looking surprisingly calm and happy, with little Martin sitting close by.
The BBC broadcast some stills from the video — and an interview with Meriam’s husband Daniel Wani, a 27-year-old biochemist who lives in Manchester in the UK and has been trying to arrange for his family to immigrate there, too — in a news report last week.
“Her psychological condition seems to be slightly better and the girl of course, she’s still small but she is in good health,” Mr Wani told the BBC in the report:
Meriam was sentenced to death for “apostasy” in April by a court in the Sudanese capital, Karthoum, for allegedly converting to Christianity from Islam. She maintains her Muslim father left when she was young and that she was raised a Christian by her Ethiopian mother, who is an Orthodox Christian.
In Meriam’s sentencing hearing, the court criticised her for insisting on “not returning” to her father’s religion, AFP reports.
“We gave you three days to recant but you insist on not returning to Islam. I sentence you to be hanged to death,” the judge reportedly told the woman.
The defendant replied: “I am a Christian and I never committed apostasy.”
The court also sentenced her to 100 lashes for ‘adultery’- not because she had been unfaithful to her husband, but because her marriage to a Christian man from South Sudan is considered void under Sharia law as practiced in the east African country.
Her sentence has provoked statements of concern from Sudanese activists, the United Nations, and governments around the world.
Amnesty International reports that Meriam has been constantly and painfully chained by her feet since her sentence, according to information received by her lawyers.
Author’s note: This article deals with one extreme penalty imposed under Sharia law; we hope it goes without saying that the vast majority of Muslims are peace-loving people who would be appalled by this decision. Comments that incite hatred will not be published.
If you’d like to support Meiram, you can sign the Amnesty petition asking Sudan to immediately free her here.
Top Comments
Meriam and her family have been released again. Time to update? I heard this this morning.
She has been arrested again.