4th August, 2014
Meriam Ibrahim, the courageous Sudanese women who refused to deny her Christian faith, has finally arrived in the United States with her family last Thursday.
Mrs Ibrahim had been sentenced to death, and refused to renounce her faith, was finally freed by a Sudanese court, and with her American husband and her children, made a stop off in Rome, Italy, where they met with the Pope.
She flew from Rome to Philadelphia with her husband and two children, en route to Manchester, New Hampshire, where her husband has relatives and the family hope to settle.
During a brief stopover in Philadelphia, the city’s mayor, Michael Nutter, welcomed her and described her as a "world freedom fighter". He added that people would remember her just like "others who stood up so we could be free".
He compared her to Rosa Parks, who became a symbol of the civil rights movement in the US when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Alabama.
And he presented Mrs Ibrahim with a small replica of the Liberty Bell, a symbol of American independence.
Her next stop was Manchester, and there were about 40 relatives and suppor ters at the airport to greet her, some of them ch anting "Long Live America", says the BBC’s Gringo Wotshela, who was at the scene.
He said her husband said a few words, in which he thanked the US government for its strong stance, the New Hampshire senators who worked hard to arrange her asylum and the people of Sudan for their support.
Mrs Ibrahim’s husband, Daniel Wani, also a Christian, is from South Sudan and has US nationality.
Their daughter Maya was born in prison in May, shortly after Mrs Ibrahim was sentenced to hang for renouncing one’s faith.
There was global condemnation when she was sentenced to hang for apostasy by a Sudanese court earlier this year.
Mrs Ibrahim’s father is Muslim so according to Sudan’s version of Islamic law she is also Muslim and cannot convert. However, she maintained she was never Muslim having been raised by her Christian mother.
Under intense international pressure, her conviction was quashed and she was freed in June although she was initially stopped from leaving the country and the family took refuge at the US embassy in Khartoum.
When in Rome, she met the Pope, who "thanked her for her witness to faith", according to a Vatican spokesman.
One Sudanese activist who was jailed 45 days in a Khartoum prison for allegedly being a US spy in 201 2 told FoxNews.com that Ibrahim’s arrival is big news within the north African community.
"As Sudanese, this story means a lot to us and is beyond a Christian woman being oppressed. It shows the oppression of our people by the current dictatorship regime," Rudwan Dawod wrote FoxNews.com. "It also highlights the collective efforts of people from all different backgrounds that supported Meriam’s release."
– DAN WOODING, ASSIST News Service
