‘Execute her,’ says brother of Sudan Christian convert

The brother of Meriam Ibrahim, a Sudanese woman facing the death penalty for converting to Christianity, has said she “should be executed.”

Al-Samani al-Hadi told CNN that he handed his sister over to the authorities because his family are “Muslim people,” and that she should “repent.”

“It's one of two; if she repents and returns to our Islamic faith and to the embrace of our family then we are her family and she is ours,” he said.

“But if she refuses she should be executed,” he said.

Ibrahim, 27, was sentenced to death for “apostasy” last month by a Khartoum court for allegedly converting to Christianity from Islam. She maintains that her Muslim father left when she was young and that she was raised a Christian by her Ethiopian mother, who is an Orthodox Christian.

Ibrahim married a Christian man from southern Sudan in a church ceremony in 2011. As in many Muslim nations, Muslim women in Sudan are prohibited from marrying non-Muslims, though Muslim men can marry outside their faith.

Ibrahim has a son, 18-month-old Martin, who is living with her in jail, where she gave birth to a second child, a baby girl, last week.

By Sudanese law, children must follow their father’s religion.

Human rights group Amnesty International condemned the sentence, calling it “abhorrent,” and the U.S. State Department said it was “deeply disturbed” by the sentence.

(With the Associated Press)