MERIAM IBRAHIM TEHYA Ishag, a Sudanese Christian woman who had faced the death penalty for renouncing Islam, has finally settled in the United States, bringing an end to her nightmare journey towards freedom.
The 26-year-old, along with her husband Daniel Wani, an American citizen, was given a rapturous and emotional welcome in her new home of Manchester, New Hampshire last night.
She had spent the day in Philadelphia, where she was honoured by Mayor Michael Nutter as a “world freedom fighter”, and presented with a model of the Liberty Bell, a symbol of US independence.
Before arriving in the US, Ibrahim had spent eight days in Rome, where she met Pope Francis (see video below), visited the Colosseum, shopped, and “learned how to live again,” in her own words.
There was worldwide uproar in May after Meriam was sentenced to hang for apostasy (converting from Islam to Christianity) in Sudan.
Under international pressure, the government in Khartoum overturned her conviction, but not before Meriam gave birth to her second child, a daughter, in prison.
When she attempted to leave Sudan, she was immediately rearrested on the grounds that she had used forged documents to travel out of the country.
In the end, she and her family took refuge in the US embassy in Sudan, where they lived for a month before finally travelling on to Italy.
Includes reporting from AFP.
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