Dr. Sandra Glahn

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Of Whom the World is Not Worthy

KHARTOUM, Sudan, May 24 (Compass Direct News) – Sudanese National Security Intelligence and Security Service agents have arrested a Christian woman in a Darfur camp for displaced people, accusing her of converting Muslims to Christianity, said sources who fear she is being tortured. Hawa Abdalla Muhammad Saleh was arrested on May 9 in the Abu Shouk camp for Internally Displaced Persons in Al-Fashir, sources said. Abdalla has yet to be officially charged, but authorities have accused her of possessing and distributing Bibles to others in the camp. Sources said she could also be tried for apostasy, which carries the death sentence in Sudan. Abdalla has been transferred to an unknown location in Khartoum, sources said, adding that they fear she could be tortured as she was detained and tortured for six days in 2009.

At the same time, in Khartoum a Christian mother of a two-month-old baby is wounded and destitute because she and her husband left Islam for Christianity. Omar Hassan and Amouna Ahamdi, both 27, said they fled Nyala for Khartoum in June 2010, but knife-wielding, masked assailants on May 4 attacked them after relatives learned that they had converted to Christianity. Ahamdi was injured trying to protect Hassan during the attack, he told Compass.

Ahamdi said her brother had stabbed her three times in the stomach nine months ago, seriously injuring her spleen, after she told him she had become a Christian (see photo, courtesy of Compass Direct News). “We cannot deny Christ – this is a big challenge to us, because we do not have a place to go,” she said, through tears. “We have no food, and we are jobless. I am still in pain, besides having a 2-month-old baby boy to care for.”