The Sudanese woman whose death sentence for allegedly renouncing Islam sparked worldwide protests, has arrived in Italy with her family. Meriam Yahia Ibrahim was accompanied by the Italian deputy foreign minister. Mrs Ibrahim was sentenced to be hanged for marrying a Christian man, something the Sudanese authorities consider apostasy for Muslim women. The authorities consider Mrs Ibrahim to be a Muslim because that was the faith of her absent father. The BBC's Alan Johnston in Rome has more.
We are talking here about the case of Meriam Ibrahim, the woman who was sentenced to death for allegedly converting from Islam to Christianity sparked an international furore and amid that in June, an appeal court quashed that sentence of apostasy. And Meriam Ibrahim and her family attempted to leave Sudan immediately, but they were prevented from doing so by the authorities. There was talk of false papers and she spent with her family the past month or so in the US Embassy in Khartoum. But today here in Rome, we heard that she was on her way here to Italy, coming in an Italian government plane, accompanied by an Italian deputy foreign minister. It's clear that behind the scenes and unbeknown to us the Italian diplomatic corps had been at work to try to resolve this case. There has been no word yet on exactly how that was done, no word from the Sudanese side. And as she landed at Ciampino Airport outside Rome, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi was there to greet her, and she emerged smiling broadly, carrying the very young baby which she actually gave birth to while chained up in a cell while her case was unfolding.
