Christian Sudanese Woman and Her Family in Protection of U.S. Embassy

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/28/world/africa/christian-sudanese-woman-and-her-family-in-protection-of-us-embassy.html

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KHARTOUM, Sudan — A Christian Sudanese woman who was detained at the airport in Khartoum with her family by Sudanese authorities after an appeals court overturned her conviction and death sentence for abandoning Islam and ordered her set free is now in the protection of the United States Embassy here, her lawyer said on Friday.

“She is at the U.S. Embassy now,” said the lawyer, El Shareef Ali Mohammed. “Some of her relatives may want to retaliate against her.”

The woman, Mariam Ibraheem Ishag, 27, born to a Muslim father and Christian mother, was sentenced to death last month in a Sudanese court on charges of deserting the religion of her father and marrying a Christian man, an act punishable by death, according to many Muslim jurists. Her Muslim relatives say her given name is Abrar al-Hadi, a Muslim name. However, Ms. Ishag, raised by her mother, has insisted that she was never Muslim. While in prison, awaiting the appeals court ruling, she gave birth to her second child, a girl.

The ruling generated an outcry by human rights groups and debate among Muslims over the concept of apostasy.

The appeals court overturned the ruling on Monday. As she tried to leave Sudan the next day with her two children and her husband, Daniel Wani, an American citizen originally from South Sudan, airport authorities detained the family, alleging that her travel documents were forged. The Embassy of South Sudan had issued her travel documents, her lawyer confirmed.

“They are not forged,” he said.

Sudanese authorities then summoned the South Sudanese ambassador and the American chargé d’affaires, and condemned the United States for trying to help the woman leave Sudan using an “illegal travel document,” according to the official Sudan News Agency.

Will Stevens, a spokesman for the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs, would not confirm that Ms. Ishag was at the embassy but said, “The family has been taken to a safe location.”

“We are in communication with the Sudanese Foreign Ministry to ensure that Ms. Ishag and her family will be free to travel as quickly as possible,” he added. “Ms. Ishag has all the necessary documents to travel to and enter the United States as soon as the government of Sudan permits her to leave Sudan.”