“The case was brought by 27-year-old Meriam Ibrahim’s Sudanese Muslim father to formally establish her as his Muslim daughter” — so that she could be executed as an apostate from Islam. The dropping of their suit means that one significant obstacle to her leaving Sudan has been cleared away. But she is not safely away from there yet; she is still in hiding in the U.S. Embassy.
“Meriam Ibrahim: Family drops lawsuit brought against Sudanese Christian convert,” by Aislinn Laing, Telegraph, July 18, 2014:
A new lawsuit against a Sudanese woman who was sentenced to death for refusing to recant her Christianity has been dropped, paving the way for her to seek exile in the United States.
The case was brought by 27-year-old Meriam Ibrahim’s Sudanese Muslim father to formally establish her as his Muslim daughter. She claimed she was raised by a Christian Ethiopian family and was abducted by the Sudanese Muslim family, a claim they denied.
The lawsuit could have made her marriage to Christian South Sudanese-American Daniel Wani illegal and threatened to further derail Ms Ibrahim’s hopes of leaving Sudan after her death sentence for apostasy was quashed in June.
The sentence, which provoked international outrage, was handed down by the country’s Supreme Court along with 100 lashes for “adultery” because the country’s Islamic law did not recognise her marriage to Daniel Wani, a Christian.
A previous attempt by Ms Ibrahim to leave the country with Mr Wani, an American citizen, after her release from prison late last month was thwarted by the authorities because they said she had “fake” documents.
On Wednesday, Abdel Rahman Malek, the family’s lawyer, said they had dropped the lawsuit before the first scheduled hearing in Khartoum Family Court on Thursday.
“We are no longer proceeding with the lawsuit,” Mr Malek told Reuters, but declined to give a reason for the decision or provide further details.
Mohaned Mostafa, Ms Ibrahim’s lawyer, said his client had not been notified of the development. She, Mr Wani and their two young children have been staying at the US Embassy in Khartoum since her release from police custody.
In a telephone interview from the embassy earlier this month, she said she could not decide whether to leave the country or not. “I want to travel but at the same time I don’t want to travel – There’s a new problem every day about me leaving,” she said.