◼ She is to be freed soon: government official says - Reuters
A Sudanese woman sentenced to death for converting to Christianity is expected to be released soon, a government official said on Saturday, after Khartoum came under diplomatic pressure to halt her execution.
"The related authorities in the country are working to release Mariam (Yahya Ibrahim), who was sentenced to death for apostasy, through legal measures," Foreign Ministry Under-Secretary Abdelah Al-Azrak told Reuters.
"I expect her to be released soon," he added.
A Sudanese court this month imposed the death sentence on the pregnant 27-year-old woman, who is married to a Christian American, and ordered her to return to Islam.
◼ Sudan ´to free´ Meriam Ibrahim - BBC
Khartoum has been facing international condemnation over the death sentence.
In an interview with The Times newspaper, British Prime Minister David Cameron described the ruling as "barbaric" and out of step with today's world.
The UK Foreign Office this week said that it would push for Ms Ibrahim to be released on humanitarian grounds.
◼ US 'fully engaged' in case of Sudanese woman sentenced to die for Christian faith - FOX
Ibrahim, who is married to a Christian man with U.S. citizenship, has been sentenced to hang for apostasy and is now allowed to breast-feed her daughter, Maya, for two years before the punishment is carried out. She also faces 100 lashes for adultery – for being intimate with her husband, Daniel Wani, who fled to the United States as a child to escape the civil war in southern Sudan, but later returned....
“Through the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum, the White House and the State Department, we have communicated our strong concern at high levels of the Sudanese government about this case,” State Department spokeswoman Nicole Thompson wrote FoxNews.com in an email. “We have heard from many, many Americans that they are deeply alarmed by [Ibrahim’s] plight. We have conveyed these views to the Government of Sudan.”
International outrage against Ibrahim’s sentence has grown significantly in recent weeks, as more than a million people signed online petitions protesting the sentence. One such effort on Change.org has garnered more than 630,000 signatures as of Friday, and Amnesty International officials have characterized the punishment doled out by a judge to be a “flagrant breach” of international human rights law. It’s also a violation of Sudan’s own Constitution, according to the State Department.
