Sudanese Christian woman reportedly freed again
Daniel Wani, who hold U.S. citizenship, and his wife, Meriam Ibrahim, may finally be able to flee Sudan.
The Sudanese Christian woman who was detained by police a day after her death sentence was lifted has been freed again, The Associated Press reported.
Citing Meriam Ibrahim’s attorney, Eman Abdul-Rahman, the news agency said the 27-year-old woman, who gave birth in prison before a Sudanese tribunal overruled a lower court and freed her, had been released. She was detained at the airport in Khartoum Tuesday after Sudanese officials accused her of using falsified travel documents in a bid to go to South Sudan.
A spokesman for the Sudanese embassy in Washington did not immediately return calls, but on Wednesday told FoxNews.com she was free to leave if she had proper documents.
“Meriam is free to leave Sudan, she just has to do it legally,” Seif Yasin said in an email.
Ibrahim was detained with her husband, Daniel Wani, at Khartoum airport Tuesday, then taken to a police station where she was held for approximately 48 hours. The detention came after a flurry of diplomatic activity involving U.S. and Sudanese officials following a ruling lifting her death sentence. Wani is a U.S. citizen, and Ibrahim’s supporters sought refugee status for her and recognition of U.S. citizenship for the couple’s two children.
But when she was detained yet again, supporters feared the Islamist nation planned to punish her anew.
“The airport passport police arrested Abrar after she presented emergency travel documents issued by the South Sudanese Embassy and carrying an American visa,” the Sudanese national security force wrote in a Facebook post, referring to Ibrahim by her Muslim family name. “The Sudanese authorities considered the action a criminal violation, and the Foreign Ministry summoned the American and South Sudanese ambassadors.”
Supporters of Ibrahim say they won’t feel she is safe until she is out of the war-torn nation.
“We’re encouraged that the State Department is engaged and working to secure the freedom of Meriam and her family,” said Jordan Sekulow, executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice, which gathered more than 300,000 signatures for an online petition demanding Ibrahim’s freedom. “Whether Meriam and her family have been ‘temporarily detained’ or arrested, holding U.S. citizens against their will is extremely disturbing and unacceptable. It has always been our concern that the only way the Ibrahim family could be truly safe is to leave Sudan.”
Ibrahim, 27, refused to renounce her Christian faith in court in May, prompting a judge to sentence her to hang for apostasy. The case became an international cause, with several U.S. lawmakers and the State Department blasting the decision as barbaric. Sudan’s national news service SUNA said the Court of Cassation in Khartoum on Monday canceled the death sentence after defense lawyers presented their case, and that the court ordered her release.
Ibrahim and Wani were married in a formal ceremony in 2011 and operate several businesses, including a farm, south of Khartoum, the country’s capital.
Wani fled to the United States as a child to escape the civil war in southern Sudan, but later returned. He is not permitted to have custody of his son because the boy is considered Muslim and cannot be raised by a Christian man.
Ibrahim’s case first came to the attention of authorities in August, after members of her father’s family complained that she was born a Muslim but married a Christian man. The relatives claimed her birth name was “Afdal” before she changed it to Meriam and produced a document that indicated she was given a Muslim name at birth. Her attorney has alleged the document was a fake.
Ibrahim says her mother was an Ethiopian Christian and her father a Muslim who abandoned the family when she was a child. Ibrahim was initially charged with having illegitimate sex last year, but she remained free pending trial. She was later charged with apostasy and jailed in February after she declared in court that Christianity was the only religion she knew.
“I was never a Muslim,” she told the Sudanese high court. “I was raised a Christian from the start.”
Sudan’s penal code criminalizes the conversion of Muslims to other religions, which is punishable by death. Muslim women in Sudan are further prohibited from marrying non-Muslims, although Muslim men are permitted to marry outside their faith. Children, by law, must follow their father’s religion.
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