Arrest as freed woman tries to fly out of Sudan: source

KHARTOUM, Tuesday

A Sudanese Christian woman was arrested today at Khartoum airport a day after a court annulled her death sentence for apostasy and released her from prison, a source familiar with the incident said.

“The National Security took her and Daniel,” said the source, referring to Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag, 26, and her American husband Daniel Wani.

The status of their two young children, one a baby born in prison before Ishag’s release, was not immediately known.
The couple were detained, for reasons that are unclear, at about 1100 GMT as they tried to leave Sudan, said the source.
“She has the right to leave the country,” the source said.

He could not give more details except to say they were taken to a facility of the powerful National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS).

Information Minister Ahmed Bilal Osman told AFP he was not familiar with the latest developments and could not comment.
Ishag’s case sparked an outcry from Western governments and rights groups after a lower-court judge sentenced her to death on May 15.

Born to a Muslim father and an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian mother, Ishag was convicted under Islamic sharia law that has been in force in Sudan since 1983 and outlaws conversions on pain of death.

When Ishag was five, her father abandoned the family, and she was raised according to her mother’s faith.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Khartoum said she joined the Catholic church shortly before she married.

“She has never been a Muslim in her life,” a statement said. After the appeal courts quashed the earlier verdict, Ishag went into hiding fearing for her life because of death threats, one of her lawyers said.

“She is in a safe place. I will not tell you where,” Mohanad Mustafa told AFP on Monday night. “The main reason is that we are concerned about her life.”

He and other members of Ms Ishag’s legal team have also been threatened.

Ishag and Wani were detained at roughly the same time the United Nations independent expert on human rights in Sudan, Mashood Adebayo Baderin, held a press conference in Khartoum.

He said that if she had received death threats, “as a citizen of this country, the Sudan has a duty to protect its citizens.”
Baderin, who visited Ishag in prison, agreed that the case “raises important legal questions about the right to freedom of religion and belief.” (AFP)