Pregnant Sudanese woman sentenced to death

Image Source: www.google.com

A court in Sudan has sentenced a pregnant woman, Meriam Yehya Ibrahim Ishag to death by hanging for getting married to a Christian. She was charged for adultery and apostasy; which is known in Sudan as abandoning ones religion for another, and considered to be a crime.

Meriam who was also sentenced to 100 lashes of cane, got married to a man from a Christian home and an indigene of South Sudan. She was found guilty of adultery because a marriage between a Muslim and a Christian is illegal in Sudan

“Sudan has a majority Muslim population, which is governed by Islamic law. It rules that apostasy - the abandonment of one's religious faith - is a crime”.

Western embassies and rights groups had urged Sudan to respect the right of the pregnant woman to choose her religion”. BBC stated on their site.

The woman who Amnesty International said bears a Muslim name, Meriam Yehya Ibrahim Ishag, was raised as an Orthodox Christian, her mother's religion, because her father, a Muslim, was reportedly absent during her childhood.

During the hearing, she calmly told the judge: "I am........

a Christian and I never committed apostasy." BBC reports

Before her sentence, she was given some days to go back to Islam "We gave you three days to recant but you insist on not returning to Islam. I sentence you to be hanged to death," the judge told the woman, AFP reports.

Amnesty's Sudan researcher Manar Idriss was quoted to have said that, “The fact that a woman has been sentenced to death for her religious choice, and to flogging for being married to a man of an allegedly different religion is appalling and abhorrent,"

 According to BBC, One of her lawyers told AFP they would appeal to a higher court to get the sentence overturned.

She is said to be eight months' pregnant. And the sentence is to begin after she delivers.

By Fakoyejo Olalekan