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A Sudanese Christian woman who faces death threats after a court cleared her of apostasy has been charged with forgery while trying to leave the country, a lawyer has said.“She is arrested,” Mohanad Mustafa said on Wednesday.
The charge against Mariam Ibrahim Ishag, 26, relates to the South Sudanese travel document she was carrying when authorities stopped the family from leaving Sudan on Tuesday following an annulment of her apostasy death sentence.
Ishag is also charged with providing false information, Mustafa said.
She was arrested at Khartoum airport, despite the presence of US diplomats who were escorting her and her family, her American husband Daniel Wani said.
They were trying to travel to Washington, Wani said. He said there was nothing wrong with her travel documents.
“We are worried. That’s why we want to get out of here as soon as possible,” Wani said of death threats against his wife.
Sudan’s foreign ministry on Wednesday summoned the charges d’affaires of both the US and South Sudan over the incident, official media reported.
Marie Harf, a spokesman for the US state department, said Washington’s charge d’affaires had voiced “concern that the family should be allowed to depart swiftly from Sudan”.
“Sudan has assured us of the family’s safety,” she added.
Sudan’s news agency, SUNA, said the country’s foreign ministry condemned the US for trying to help the woman leave Sudan “via an illegal travel document” and criticised South Sudan for issuing her with a travel document..
Information Minister Ahmed Bilal Osman said the woman should have used a Sudanese passport, but her lawyer said she did not have one.
“That is the whole problem, she took a foreign document for travelling,” he said. “What she has done is an illegal act.” However, Osman suggested the situation could be resolved.
Kau Nak, South Sudan’s charge d’affaires, said Ishag was entitled to the travel document because her husband and children are South Sudanese.
“I’m the one who issued that travel document to her,” he said. “My signature is on the back of the document.”
A lower court judge sentenced Ishag to hang for apostasy on May 15, in a case that raised questions of religious freedom and sparked an outcry from human rights groups.
An appeal court freed her on Monday from the women’s prison where she had been detained with her children, but she immediately went into hiding because of the threats to her life. — AFP
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