After garnering international uproar, a Sudanese court finally ordered the release of Mariam Yahia Ibrahim, who was sentenced to death last month, for converting from Islam to Christianity.
The case of Ibrahim, 27, who is married to Daniel Wani - an American Christian, had raked up an international outcry in the US, France and several other countries. Earlier last month Britain had even summoned the Sudanese high commissioner to protest the sentencing.
"The Court of Appeal in Khartoum North overturned a judgment of the trial court of Haj Yousef and issued a decision to release the prisoner Abrar Hadi Mohammed Abdullah (alias Mariam Ibrahim), after the pleadings submitted by her defence," state media SUNA reported.
According to Ibrahim's lawyer Mohaned Mostafa, she has already been released and sent "to an unknown house to stay at for her protection and security."
"Her family had been threatened before and we are worried that someone might try to harm her," Mostafa told Reuters.
On 5 May, a Sudanese local court had sentenced Ibrahim to death by hanging, after convicting her on charges of apostasy and adultery.
Ibrahim was three weeks pregnant with her second child, when she was arrested in September 2013. And since then, she was kept at the Federal Women's Prison along with her two-year-old son Martin.
Ibrahim is the daughter of a Sudanese Muslim father and an Ethiopian Christian mother, according to The Guardian. But she was raised a Christian, after her father left her and her mother. In December 2011, Ibrahim married US national Wani.
During her trial in May, the Islamic Sharia judge had stated that she could be forgiven and could avoid the death sentence, if she publicly announces her faith in Islam and become a Muslim again.
However, Ibrahim, whose muslim name is Abrar Hadi Mohammed Abdullah, refused to change her religion.
"I refuse to change. I am not giving up Christianity just so that I can live. I know I could stay alive by becoming a Muslim and I would be able to look after our family, but I need to be true to myself," Ibrahim had stressed.
Despite being pregnanent, Ibrahim was made to live under very hard conditons during her imprisonment.
"Her feet are shackled. Her legs are swollen," Tina Ramirez, executive director of Hardwired, a US-based advocacy group against religious persecution had told the New York Daily News after visiting her in jail. "It's just outrageous. She's eight and a-half months pregnant."
