A Sudanese
woman sitting on death row has given birth. The 27-year-old was sentenced to be
hanged for converting from Islam to Christianity.
Deutsche Welle, 27 May 2014
Little over
a week after receiving the death sentence, Sudanese inmate Meriam Ibrahim Ishag
gave birth to a girl. The death row inmate, jailed for refusing to deny her
Christian faith and convert to Islam, was eight months pregnant.
The woman's
husband, Daniel Wani, saw them on Tuesday. In addition to his weekly permitted
visits to the prison, located in Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman, Wani has not
yet received special permission for an additional visit.
"I'm
disappointed really," Wani told news agency AFP. "We weren't able to
speak. There [was] a guard sitting there beside us."
The
27-year-old mother would continue to care for the newborn for the next two
years, according to news agency DPA. Rights activists have told reporters that
the inmate has already been caring for her 20-month old son in prison.
The case
emerged last year when relatives of her father's family complained that she had
been born Muslim but was married to a Christian man.
On May 15, a Sudanese court handed down the death sentence to the pregnant woman. Ishag
was raised as a Christian in Sudan, where Sharia, or Islamic law, has applied
since the early 1990s. Judge Abbas Mohammed al-Khalifa said that she would be
hanged for not declaring Islam to be the religion of her birth.
One of
Ibrahim Ashag's lawyers, Al-Shareef Ali al-Shareef Mohammed, has vowed to
appeal the sentence before Sudan's constitutional court if necessary. According
to Mohammed, Ishag's Muslim father had left her mother when she was a child and
her mother - an Orthodox Christian from Ethiopia - had raised her as a
Christian.
Under
Sudanese President Omar Bashir, sharia prohibits Muslim women from marrying
non-Muslims. Children must follow their father's religion.
kms/jm (AFP, dpa)
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Mohammad
Iqbal, right, in an ambulance next to the body of his pregnant
wife who was
stoned to death by her own family in Lahore. Photograph:
KM Chaudary/AP
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