Chris Northover PHOTO/FILE
I guess we would never have heard about Meriam if she wasn't beautiful. But she is - so we have.
The 27-year-old was chained to the floor of a Khartoum prison when she gave birth to her daughter, Maya, recently. She will be allowed to suckle her baby for two years, after which the authorities will administer 100 lashes then execute her by hanging.
A medical doctor from North Sudan, Meriam Ibrahim married her husband, Daniel Wani, a Christian from South Sudan, now in the United States and that is when the trouble began.
The daughter of a Christian mother and a Muslim father, she was brought up a Christian when her father left when she was 6.
She said she was never a Muslim but the court in Sudan ruled that, as the property of her father until she was legally given in marriage, she was a Muslim like her father. She would then become the property of her husband provided, of course, the marriage was legal. The court found that her marriage was illegal because it is illegal for a Muslim to marry a Christian. Her three-year marriage was annulled.
Sudan's penal code states that anyone who renounces Islam commits the crime of apostasy she was guilty of apostasy and should be executed unless she would recant her beliefs.
"If they want to execute me, then they should go ahead and do it, because I'm not going to change my faith," she told her husband. Because sex outside a "lawful relationship" is regarded by Sudan's sharia legal code as adultery, Meriam was liable to be stoned to death, lashed or banished.
Meriam's brother, Al Samani al Hadi Mohamed Abdullah, said that Daniel Wani this "priest" - must have given her some "magic potion" in order to convert her to Christianity. When she had been caught at her husband's parents' house "she looked different the way she looked at us was different. She was bewitched like an unconscious person. She didn't know any of us
"If she dies we will have enforced God's word. The solution is that she is executed."
There has been speculation that Meriam's fate is as a result of a family feud and that her Islamic relatives would like to get their hands on her three successful businesses - a farm, a supermarket and a beauty salon. This was denied by her brother who said: "The world should not involve itself with our family affairs. This is a family and these are our private affairs."
Under Sudanese law, if Meriam dies her property will go to her Islamic family. While it has been said that President Omar al-Bashir was considering a presidential pardon, reports that her release was imminent have been dismissed by the Sudanese Government. While it is possible that Meriam's problems have come about due to her grasping family - a problem not unknown to us in our culture - the fact is that all of the consequences for her are all perfectly legal in her country. I have not heard a squeak about it from our government or from the United Nations. I guess that beauty only gets you so far.
Chris Northover is a Wanganui-based former corporate lawyer who has worked in the fields of aviation, tourism, health and the environment