US 'fully engaged' in case of Sudanese woman sentenced to die for Christian faith
By Joshua Rhett Miller Published May 31, 2014
American diplomats are “fully engaged” in the heart-wrenching case of Meriam Ibrahim, a Sudanese woman sentenced to death earlier this month after refusing to renounce her Christian faith, FoxNews.com has learned.
Ibrahim, 27, gave birth to a girl early Tuesday at a prison clinic in Omdurman, near Khartoum, one of her attorneys told FoxNews.com by phone. Ibrahim, who is married to a Christian man with U.S. citizenship, has been sentenced to hang for apostasy and is now allowed to breast-feed her daughter, Maya, for two years before the punishment is carried out. She also faces 100 lashes for adultery – for being intimate with her husband, Daniel Wani, who fled to the United States as a child to escape the civil war in southern Sudan, but later returned.
“Through the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum, the White House and the State Department, we have communicated our strong concern at high levels of the Sudanese government about this case,” State Department spokeswoman Nicole Thompson wrote FoxNews.com in an email. “We have heard from many, many Americans that they are deeply alarmed by [Ibrahim’s] plight. We have conveyed these views to the Government of Sudan.”
International outrage against Ibrahim’s sentence has grown significantly in recent weeks, as more than a million people signed online petitions protesting the sentence. One such effort on Change.org has garnered more than 630,000 signatures as of Friday, and Amnesty International officials have characterized the punishment doled out by a judge to be a “flagrant breach” of international human rights law. It’s also a violation of Sudan’s own Constitution, according to the State Department.
“We call upon the Government of Sudan to respect the right to freedom of religion, including one’s right to change one’s faith or beliefs, a right which is enshrined in international human rights law as well as in Sudan’s own 2005 interim Constitution,” Thompson’s email continued. “We call on the Sudanese legal authorities to approach this case with the compassion that is in keeping with the values of the Sudanese people.”
U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., chairman of the House congressional panel that oversees U.S. policy in Africa, has called on the African nation to reverse Ibrahim’s sentence immediately.
“The refusal of the government of Sudan to allow religious freedom was one of the reasons for Sudan’s long civil war,” Smith said in a statement.
It is not clear what diplomatic pressure the U.S. can bring to bear on Khartoum. Although American taxpayers send roughly $300 million per year in economic aid, the help is largely in the form of food and medicine. Cutting it off would only hurt the people, and not the regime of President Omar al-Bashir, who has been indicted as a war criminal by the International Criminal Court.
Ibrahim and Wani married in 2011 and operate several businesses, including a farm, south of Khartoum, the country’s capital. Wani is not permitted to have custody of the couple’s son, Martin, because the boy is considered Muslim and cannot be raised by a Christian man. Sudan's penal code criminalizes the conversion of Muslims to other religions, which is punishable by death. Anyone born to a Muslim father is automatically a Muslim.
Ibrahim’s case first came to the attention of authorities in August, when members of her father’s family complained that she was born a Muslim but married a Christian man. They claimed her birth name was “Afdal” before she changed it to Meriam. The document produced by relatives to indicate she was given a Muslim name at birth was reportedly fake. She also refused to answer a judge who referred to her as “Afdal” during a court hearing earlier this month where she declared that Christianity was the only religion she knew.
“I was never a Muslim,” she told a judge. “I was raised a Christian from the start.”
Ibrahim’s husband, who reportedly suffers from muscular dystrophy, was initially not allowed to visit with his wife after the birth of their daughter, human rights attorney Safwan Abdalmoniem told FoxNews.com. Wani was ultimately allowed to see his wife and child by Thursday, two days after the girl’s birth. Ibrahim now remains in a prison hospital wing in deplorable, “inadequate” conditions, Abdalmoniem said.
“The conditions there for a woman in a situation like herself is very bad,” he said. “It’s not good.”
It remains unclear when Ibrahim will receive 100 lashes as part of her sentence, but the African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies said implementation of the punishment is subject to Ibrahim’s health.
“ACPJS condemns in the strongest terms the application of the death penalty in Sudan and all laws that prescribe torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments,” the group said in a statement. “Ms. Ibrahim has been convicted solely on the basis of her religious beliefs, contrary to equality and non-discrimination guarantees in Sudan’s own Constitution and commitments made by the Government of Sudan under regional and international law.”
Sudanese President Omar Bashir, meanwhile, has said his county will implement Islam more strictly now that the non-Muslim south is gone. A number of Sudanese have been convicted of apostasy in recent years, but they have all escaped execution by recanting their faith.
On Friday, the American Islamic Forum for Democracy blasted Bashir's regime and said inaction by the international community was akin to being complicit in the his crimes against humanity, including systematic rape, murder and torture.
"The Sudanese court’s decision to sentence Meriam Ibrahim to life in prison and physical torture is as repugnant as any attack on human rights," AIFD officials said in a statement. "Freedom of conscience — the freedom to choose any faith or none at all — is a basic and inalienable human right. For every Meriam there are hundreds to thousands more we do not hear about. When will the international community and all individuals of conscience say enough to barbaric regimes like Al-Bashir's?"
Sudan denies mother sentenced to hang to be freed soon
AFP June 1, 2014, 11:59 pm
[shucks, can't get image to work] Sudan denies mother sentenced to hang to be freed soon AFP
Khartoum (AFP) - Sudan denied on Sunday a Christian Sudanese woman sentenced to hang for apostasy would be freed soon, saying quotes attributed to a foreign ministry official had been taken out of context.
Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag was sentenced to death on May 15 under the Islamic sharia law that has been in place since 1983 and outlaws conversions under pain of death.
Abdullah al-Azraq, a foreign ministry under-secretary, told AFP and other media outlets on Saturday that Ishag "will be freed within days in line with legal procedure that will be taken by the judiciary and the ministry of justice."
But the foreign ministry said the release of the 27-year-old, who gave birth to a baby girl in prison on Tuesday, depended on whether a court accepted an appeal request made by her defence team.
A ministry statement said Azraq actually told media on Saturday "that the defence team of the concerned citizen has appealed the verdict ... and if the appeals court rules in her favour, she will be released."
Azraq said "the government does not interfere in the work of the judiciary because it is an independent body," the ministry added.
"Some media took what the undersecretary said out of context, changing the meaning of what he said."
After Azraq's comment Saturday, Ishag's husband, Daniel Wani, told AFP he did not believe she would be freed.
"No one has contacted me and I don't think it will happen. We have submitted an appeal but they have not looked at it yet, so how is it that they will release her?" he said.
Ishag's lawyer Mohannad Mustapha had expressed doubts she would be released or that charges against her would be dropped.
"The only party who can do that is the appeals court but I am not sure that they have the full case file," he said on Saturday.
Earlier this week, Mustapha said a hearing that was due to take place on Wednesday was postponed because the file was incomplete.
Ishag was born to a Muslim father but said during her trial she had never been a Muslim herself.
The court gave her three days to "recant" her faith and when she refused, Ishag was handed the death penalty and sentenced to 100 lashes for "adultery".
Under Sudan's interpretation of sharia, a Muslim woman cannot marry a non-Muslim man, and any such relationship is regarded as adulterous.
Her case sparked international condemnation, with British Prime Minister David Cameron denouncing the "barbaric" sentence.
Wani, a US citizen, visited Ishag and the baby on Thursday after being denied access earlier in the week and said that both were in good health.
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