Condemned Sudanese Christian woman gives birth in prison

Baby girl is being incarcerated with 27-year-old mother who is sentenced to hang for refusing to renounce her faith.

KHARTOUM //A Christian Sudanese woman, sentenced to hang for apostasy in a case that has sparked international outcry, has given birth in jail, her husband said Tuesday.

“Until now I did not see them. They didn’t allow me to go in and see,” Daniel Wani said.

“I’m disappointed really,” he said from a prisons office where he was continuing efforts to see his wife and newborn daughter.

Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag, 27, is being held at a women’s prison in Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman.

Mr Wani said he and his wife have not yet chosen a name for their baby.

Ms Ishag already has a 20-month old son, who is also incarcerated with her, rights activists say.

A Khartoum-area court sentenced her to death on May 15.

Born to a Muslim father, she was convicted under the Islamic sharia law that has been in force in Sudan since 1983 and outlaws conversions on pain of death.

Mr Wani said he is normally granted a weekly visit to the prison but had sought special permission to see his wife again after she gave birth.

Ms Ishag was “frustrated” when he saw her on Monday, he said.

“We weren’t able to speak. There is a guard sitting there beside us,” said Mr Wani, a Christian who says he was born in Khartoum.

“The mother and the baby seem to be doing OK,” a Western diplomat who is familiar with Ishag’s case said.

But he said: “It’s a cruel treatment to be in such a situation.”

Giving birth in a jail “is certainly not the best place, for physical and psychological reasons,” the diplomat said.

“We gave you three days to recant but you insist on not returning to Islam. I sentence you to be hanged,” Judge Abbas Mohammed Al Khalifa said as he passed the verdict against Ishag, addressing her by her father’s Muslim name, Adraf Al Hadi Mohammed Abdullah.

* Agence France-Presse