Public Catholic reader Hannah alerted me that this report was premature. Mrs Ibrahim has not been freed, and is charged with a new crime. Go here for details.
Meriam Ibrahim, the Sudanese woman who was sentenced to hang for refusing to renounce her Christian faith, has been freed once again.
Mrs Ibrahim, who was 8 months pregnant when she was sentenced and who was forced to give birth in prison while awaiting execution, was freed by the court in Sudan on Monday. Then, she and her family were detained on Tuesday while they were at the airport. Now, they have been freed once again.
According to reports, Mrs Ibrahim, her husband and their two children, one-month-old Maya and Martin, 21 months, were surrounded by 40 security agents at and taken in to detention.
“It is very disappointing,” their attorney said, “… they took the family to a NSS detention center. They have not been given access to lawyers.”
The official story, now that Mrs Ibrahim and her family have been freed, is that they were “temporarily detained … over questions related to their documents.”
From LifeNews.com:
Meriam Ibrahim, the Christian woman who was jailed and forced to give birth in prison in the Muslim nation of Sudan and who was released yesterday after a court overturned a verdict of apostasy, was freed again after she was re-arrested trying to leave the country.
The BBC has more details on the re-release after the several hour detention:
A Sudanese woman freed from death row on Monday has been released again after being briefly detained with her family at Khartoum airport.
Meriam Ibrahim was sentenced in May to hang for renouncing Islam, sparking widespread outrage at home and abroad.
“They were temporarily detained for several hours over questions related to their documents,” Marie Harf, a spokeswoman for the US state department, told journalists.
CNN has more details on what initially happened to Ibrahim Tuesday morning and she and her husband and newborn daughter Mara attempted to leave the country:
A Sudanese woman whose death sentence for refusing to renounce her Christian faith was revoked has been rearrested, her legal team told CNN Tuesday.
Meriam Ibrahim, 27, and her husband, Daniel Wani, were arrested Tuesday at an airport in Sudan’s capital as they were trying to leave the African country, Ibrahim’s legal team said.
Details about why the couple were arrested weren’t immediately available.
Ibrahim, 27, was convicted in May by a Sudanese court on charges of apostasy, or the renunciation of faith, and adultery — charges that led to international controversy. Ibrahim was eight months pregnant when she was sentenced to suffer 100 lashes and then be hanged.
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