Joanne Moudy
While the world moves forward and focuses on other issues, one innocent 27 year-old woman is stuck in a never-ending nightmare from which it seems she cannot escape. And instead of her situation improving, things are only getting worse.
Dr. Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag, the Sudanese Christian mother of two who was arrested last summer on grounds of apostasy and adultery, still remains captive in Sudan. Although the apostasy conviction was overturned and she is not currently imprisoned, she has been re-charged with fraud for attempting to use South Sudan travel documents bearing her Christian name and not the name of her biological father.
And now, to make matters much worse, a civil suit has been filed against her by an alleged family member for ‘leaving her family,’ ‘converting from Islam,’ and participating in an ‘illegal marriage’ to a Christian U.S. citizen.
But aside from the obvious, what’s frequently overlooked in all of this mess is that the U.S. has botched this situation from the outset. The U.S. is – quite possibly – completely responsible for all of Meriam’s troubles in the first place, and for that there is no excuse.
As a matter of fact, our U.S. Embassy’s repeated failures to assist Meriam’s U.S. citizen husband, Daniel Wani, prompted 38 bi-partisan members of Congress, spearheaded by U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, AZ D-8, to send a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry requesting that he facilitate extrication of the family from the hostile Sudan to safety in the U.S. where they would be granted sanctuary. Evidence indicates Mr. Kerry disregarded the letter.
According to Daniel, he has tried unsuccessfully for three years to obtain a visa for his wife so that they could travel to the U.S. When his wife became pregnant with their second child last summer he tried to meet with Embassy personnel on three separate occasions to plead for rightful travel permits for Meriam and their toddler son, Martin, also a legal U.S. citizen. During each visit Daniel was told by Embassy employees they didn’t have time to deal with the matter.
Interestingly enough, it was when the small family departed the embassy after the third visit that a stranger, claiming to be Meriam’s relative, showed up with the religious police and had her arrested. Even now it remains unclear how the man knew of Meriam’s desire to exit Sudan, especially considering such an Embassy meeting should have been a private matter and Meriam claims she’d never met the stranger prior to that fateful day.
Another fact rarely mentioned is that according to the Daily Mail, Meriam is the owner of at least one successful business in Khartoum, possibly more. If her marriage were to be annulled and she were to be conveniently murdered per Shari’a law, then it would be easy for a shyster to usurp her businesses and take control. The man who originally accused her of apostasy is also the man who filed the recent civil suit.
Also of serious note is that the U.S. Embassy personnel do not recognize the couple’s two children as U.S. citizens because they don’t recognize Daniel as their father. In an absurd twist, U.S. Embassy officials are demanding proof in the form of a DNA test, which they are requiring be completed by a U.S. laboratory. That’s a little tricky when you’re stuck in Khartoum.
Such an unusual demand begs the question of how deep the corruption goes within the employees working at an Embassy paid for by our tax dollars. Because let’s face it, if Meriam is eliminated and it’s deemed she has no legal spouse or children – then voila, no one can stand in the way of taking away her businesses.
Embassy incompetence also exemplifies the corrupt disparity in our immigration policy. While Obama opens the floodgates to illegal illiterates expecting decades of handouts, he denies access to intelligent, educated people ready to contribute something positive to our society.
Instead of the U.S. personnel doing their job and assisting the family, they allowed the Shari’a police to arrest and imprison Meriam in Omdurman Federal Women’s Prison in Khartoum, where she was repeatedly beaten, assaulted, malnourished, and denied all medical treatment. When Meriam’s baby girl, Maya, was birthed two weeks prematurely, the guards refused to remove the chains binding Meriam’s feet together, causing Maya to be forced out through the birth canal in a restricted position.
Although Meriam pleaded to have her legs freed from the chains, her screams fell upon the guard’s deaf ears and she was forced to deliver in a terribly contorted position. Sadly, this was just another example of their unimaginable torture of a Christian woman and now there is concern her baby girl may be disabled and may have difficulty walking.
Bottom line. All of this was allowed to happen by U.S. Embassy personnel who are supervised by our embarrassing U.S. State Department, and ultimately overseen by a president who is incompetent in all foreign policy matters and demonstrates sympathy to radical Islamists.
One other small fact worth mentioning is that according to multiple sources, President Obama’s Kenyan half-brother, Malik Obama, is closely associated with Sudan’s President al-Bashir and has direct ties to their radical Islamist government. It’s hard to know whether Malik is involved in Meriam’s plight or not but the brotherly relationship definitely brings President Obama’s deafening silence about Meriam into question.
Let’s face it. The entire situation stinks and the longer it goes on the more suspicious the U.S. appears in all of it. What should have been a slam-dunk one-way ticket to freedom for the entire family has become a kangaroo circus of monumental and international proportions and four innocent lives still hang in the balance.
Without questions, the Shari’a deck is stacked against all women and particularly against this gentle mother who’s only crime has been defying radical Islamists by being an intelligent, hardworking, educated, Christian mother of two U.S. citizens.
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