Save Meriam Yehya Ibrahim and urge for a change in the Islamic law
This is URGENT, her time is RUNNING OUT- Please sign NOW.
A Sudanese judge has sentenced a Christian woman to hang for apostasy, despite appeals by Western embassies for compassion and respect for religious freedom.
The case, thought to be the first of its kind to be heard in Sudan, involves a woman whose Christian name is Mariam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag.
"We gave you three days to recant but you insist on not returning to Islam," Judge Abbas Mohammed Al-Khalifa told the woman on Thursday, addressing her by her father's Muslim name, Adraf Al-Hadi Mohammed Abdullah.
"I sentence you to be hanged to death."
Khalifa also sentenced Ishag to 100 lashes for "adultery".
Ishag, who rights activists say is pregnant and 27 years old, reacted without emotion when Abbas delivered the verdict at a court in the Khartoum district of Haj Yousef.
Earlier in the hearing, an Islamic religious leader spoke with Ishag in the caged dock for about 30 minutes.
Then she calmly told the judge: "I am a Christian and I never committed apostasy."
Sudan's government introduced Islamic law in 1983 but extreme punishments other than flogging are rare.
It is very important your help so they don't execute Mariam, and we show the people in the power that the world has changed and we are not going to accept the killing of an innocent.
Adultery and apostasy are acts which should not be considered crimes at all. It is flagrant breach of international human rights law.
"The details of this case expose the regime's blatant interference in the personal life of Sudanese citizens," Sudan Change Now Movement, a youth group, said in a statement on Wednesday.
Speaking to AFP news agency on Wednesday, Ahmed Bilal Osman, Sudan's information minister, said: "It's not only Sudan. In Saudi Arabia, in all the Muslim countries, it is not allowed at all for a Muslim to change his religion."
President Omar al-Bashir's government is facing a huge economic and political challenge after the 2011 secession of South Sudan, which was Sudan's main source of oil.
Please sign this petition to give hope and life not only to Mariam but to other people that could be in the same situation in the future.
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