Sudan, May 19, 2014
Meriam Yehya Ibrahim Ishag, right, is seen with her husband Daniel Wani.
A New Hampshire man has returned to his native Sudan in a desperate bid to save his pregnant wife from hanging.
Daniel Wani, a Sudanese immigrant with U.S. citizenship, is now fighting for his wife's life after she was jailed with their 18-month-old son and sentenced to death for refusing to recant her Christian faith.
"I'm just praying for God. He can do a miracle," Wani's distraught brother,Gabriel Wani, told WMUR of his brother's recent travels from their home in Manchester.
Meriam Ibrahim, 26, who's eight months pregnant, was sentenced to death Thursday after convicted of "apostasy." Because of the Islamic court's refusal to acknowledge her 2011 marriage to Wani, who's a Christian, she was also sentenced to receive 100 lashes for adultery.
As in many Muslim nations, Muslim women in Sudan are prohibited from marrying non-Muslims, though Muslim men can marry outside their faith. By law, children must follow their father's religion.
Ibrahim's father was Muslim but he left her mother, who was an Orthodox Christian from Ethiopia, when she was a child, according to her family's attorney, Al-Shareef Ali al-Shareef Mohammed. She was consequently raised Christian.
The tribunal where the trial against Ibrahim for apostasy took place in Khartoum, Sudan, is seen. The Islamic court also sentenced her to 100 lashes for adultery because they refuse to acknowledge her marriage to her Christian husband.
Ibrahim was given four days to repent, accept Islam as her religion and ultimately escape death, said Mohammed, but it was an offer she refused.
Mohammed said he intends to appeal Ibrahim's conviction.
"The judge has exceeded his mandate when he ruled that Meriam's marriage was void because her husband was out of her faith," Mohammed told The Associated Press. "He was thinking more of Islamic Shariah laws than of the country's laws and its constitution."
Amnesty International has since condemned the sentence as "abhorrent," while New Hampshire's senators penned a letter Friday to Secretary of State John Kerry urging "immediate action".
The U.S. State Department reacted by calling on the government to respect the right to freedom of religion while expressing how "deeply disturbed" they were by the sentencing.
St. Matthew's Catholic Cathedral near the Sudanese capital Khartoum is seen. Ibrahim was raised a Christian by her mother, but because her father was Muslim law requires her to practice that religion.
Ibrahim and Wani married in a formal church ceremony in 2011 and have a son named Martin, who is with her in jail. The couple runs several businesses, including a farm south of Khartoum.
Ibrahim's case first came to the attention of authorities in August, when members of her father's family complained that she was born a Muslim but married a Christian man.
They claimed that her birth name was "Afdal" and that she changed it to Meriam. Mohammed said the document produced by relatives to show she was given a Muslim name at birth was a fake. Ibrahim refused to answer Judge Abbas Khalifa when he called her "Afdal" during Thursday's hearing. Meriam is a common name for Muslims and Christians alike.
"I was never a Muslim. I was raised a Christian from the start," she said.
