Last night, BBC News reported what appeared to be wonderful news--Meriam Ibrahim, the Sudanese woman who was facing death by hanging for renouncing Islam in favor of Christianity, was about to be freed. I diaried on this here.
Well, earlier today the Sudanese government poured cold douche on this news, saying that Ibrahim will only be freed if she wins an appeal of her conviction.
Abdullahi al-Azreg, an under-secretary at the foreign ministry, told the BBC on Saturday that Ms Ibrahim, 27, would be freed because Sudan guaranteed religious freedom and was committed to protecting her.
But the foreign ministry said on Sunday issued a clarification, saying that only the judicial system could rule on the case.
"The defence team of the concerned citizen has appealed the verdict ... and if the appeals court rules in her favour, she will be released," the ministry said.
Ibrahim had been brought up as a Christian for most of her life, but a Sudanese court ruled that she was legally a Muslim because her father, who had abandoned her family years earlier, was a Muslim. When Ibrahim refused to renounce Christianity, she was ruled an apostate--a capital offense in Sudan, where sharia has been the law since 1989. As we all know, an appeal would be a crapshoot anywhere--but especially in a country with a human-rights record as appalling as Sudan's.
To add insult to injury, it looks like Ibrahim's husband, Daniel Wani, wasn't told of any planned release.
"No Sudanese or foreign mediator contacted me. Maybe there are contacts between the Sudanese government and foreign sides that I'm not aware of," Mr Wani told Mohammad Osman, the BBC's correspondent in the Sudanese capital Khartoum.
"As far as I'm concerned I will wait for the appeal which my lawyer submitted and I hope that my wife will be released."
Wani and Ibrahim had their marriage annulled, but Wani, who is also an American citizen, is also appealing that decision. Ibrahim recently gave birth to a daughter--her second child with Wani--and the court stayed the death sentence for two years so she could nurse the baby.
Whoever is playing with the emotions of this family and the world ought to be ashamed of themselves.