By Joseph DeCaro, Worthy News Correspondent
KHARTOUM, SUDAN (Worthy News)-- A Sudanese judge Thursday sentenced a pregnant Christian to hang for apostasy despite appeals by Western embassies for compassion, according to The Times of Israel.
"We gave you three days to recant, but you insist on not returning to Islam -- I sentence you to be hanged," said Judge Abbas Al-Khalifa to defendant Meriam Yahia Ibrahim.
As Ibrahim is eight months pregnant and married to a Christian national of South Sudan, Khalifa also sentenced her to 100 lashes since any Muslim woman who marries a non-Muslim commits adultery under sharia. Both the lashing and the hanging, respectively, will occur after Ibrahim gives birth to her second child next month.
One of Ibrahim's lawyers, Mohanad Mustafa, said they will go to the appeals court, then the supreme court and even the Constitutional Court because they believe Sudan's prohibition against apostasy violates its own constitution.
Earlier in the hearing, an Islamic cleric tried to convince Ibrahim to return to Islam to escape the death sentence, but she told the judge: "I am a Christian and I never committed apostasy."
At age six, Ibrahim's Muslim father forever left the family, freeing her to be raised as an Orthodox Christian by her mother.