A 26-year-old pregnant Sudanese woman who married a Christian man has been sentenced to death for apostasy after refusing to recant her Christian faith.
Meriam Ibrahim, whose father was Muslim but mother was an Orthodox Christian from Ethiopia, was convicted on Sunday after a four-day grace period allowing her repent and escape death had expired, said lawyer said. Meriam is eight months pregnant. Her execution is reportedly stayed until she gives birth.
Amnesty International immediately condemned the sentence, calling it “abhorrent.” The US State Department said it was “deeply disturbed” by the sentencing and called on the government of the Islamic country to respect the right to freedom of religion.
Ibrahim and her husband Daniel Wani were married in a formal church ceremony in 2011 and have a son, 20-month-old Martin, who is with her in jail. The couple runs several businesses, including a farm, south of Khartoum.
Sudan’s penal code criminalizes the conversion of Muslims into other religions, which is punishable by death. As in many Muslim nations, Muslim women in Sudan are prohibited from marrying non-Muslims, though Muslim men can marry outside their faith. By law, children must follow their father’s religion.
Sudan introduced Sharia laws in the early 1980s under the rule of autocrat Jaafar Nimeiri, a move that contributed to the resumption of an insurgency in the mostly animist and Christian south of Sudan. An earlier round of civil war lasted 17 years and ended in 1972. The south seceded in 2011 to become South Sudan.
Sudanese President Omar Bashir, an Islamist who seized power in a 1989 military coup, says his country would implement Islam more strictly now that the non-Muslim south was gone.
A number of Sudanese have been convicted of apostasy in recent years, but they all escaped execution by recanting their new faith. Religious thinker and politician Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, a critic of Nimeiri and his interpretation of Sharia, was sentenced to death after his conviction of apostasy. He was executed in 1985 at the age of 76.
The court in the capital, Khartoum, also ordered that Ibrahim be given 100 lashes before her execution for having what it considers sexual relations with her husband, Daniel Wani, a Christian from southern Sudan who has US citizenship, according to the lawyer and judicial officials cited by the 'Associated Press'.
Ibrahim’s case first came to the attention of authorities last August when members of her father’s family complained that she was born a Muslim but married a Christian man. They claimed that her birth name was “Afdal” and that she changed it to Meriam. Mohammed said the document produced by relatives to show she was given a Muslim name at birth was a fake. Ibrahim refused to answer Judge Abbas Khalifa when he called her “Afdal” during Thursday’s hearing. Meriam is a common name for Muslims and Christians alike. “I was never a Muslim. I was raised a Christian from the start,” she said.
Authorities first charged her with having illegitimate sex last year but she remained free pending trial. She was charged with apostasy and jailed in February after she declared in court that Christianity was the only religion she knew.
