Woman sentenced to death gives birth in prison

Photo / Getty Images

The Sudanese woman sentenced to hang for refusing to renounce Christianity has given birth to a baby girl named Maya, her lawyers said.

Meriam Ibrahim, 27, had her second child in the hospital wing of the prison where she awaits execution. "They didn't even take Meriam to a hospital - she just delivered inside a prison clinic," said Elshareef Ali Elshareef Mohammed, her lawyer. "Her husband and I have not been allowed to see her."

Ms Ibrahim's husband, Daniel Wani, an American citizen who suffers from muscular dystrophy and is in a wheelchair, said last week that she was being kept shackled by the ankles in her cell.

He has frequently been denied permission to visit his wife but, last week, on a rare visit inside the cell, said that Ms Ibrahim was still refusing to convert to Islam.

She reportedly told him: "If they want to execute me then they should go ahead and do it because I'm not going to change my faith. I refuse to change. I am not giving up Christianity just so that I can live. I need to be true to myself."

Their son, Martin, who is 20 months old, has been with her in the cell since she was charged in February. She was sentenced to death on May 15 by a court in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital.

Ms Ibrahim denied the charges of apostasy and adultery - the court did not recognise her 2011 marriage to Mr Wani, a Christian. She said her Muslim father abandoned the family and she was raised a Christian.

She is to be allowed to nurse her child for two years before the sentence is carried out. A petition to quash Ms Ibrahim's sentence, organised by Amnesty International, has been signed by 660,000 people so far but the rights group has been barred from Sudan since 2005.

Ms Ibrahim's lawyers have filed an appeal against her sentence at the Appeal Court of Bahri and Sharq Al Nil.

-----

A pregnant woman was stoned to death by her own family in front of a Pakistani high court yesterday for marrying the man she loved.

Nearly 20 members of the woman's family, including her father, who was later arrested, attacked her and her husband with batons and bricks in Lahore.