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A SUDANESE woman sentenced to death for abandoning her religious faith has been freed from jail, her lawyer has told the BBC.
Meriam Ibrahim’s death penalty was overturned by an appeal court, the official Suna news agency reported.She is married to a Christian man and was sentenced under Sharia law to hang for apostasy in May after refusing to renounce Christianity. Her husband told the BBC he was looking forward to seeing her.
The death sentence for Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag, who gave birth to a daughter in prison not long after she was convicted, sparked international outrage.
“We are very, very happy about this — and we’re going to her now,” Ms Ibrahim’s lawyer Elshareef Ali told the BBC.
“They have released her . . . she’s on her way home,” he said.
Born to a Muslim father, Ms Ibrahim, 27, married Mr Wani, a Christian, in 2011.
She has been in jail since February, along with her young son.
Sudan has a majority Muslim population. Islamic law has been in force there since the 1980s.
Even though Ms Ibrahim was brought up as an Orthodox Christian, the authorities consider her to be a Muslim. Her husband, who was born in South Sudan before it became independent from Sudan, went to the US in 1998 at the height of the civil war.
He met Ms Ibrahim in 2011 on a visit to Sudan and they were married at the main church in Khartoum.— BBC.
Online Reporter