Sudanese security agents have arrested a Christian woman in a Darfur refugee camp, accusing her of converting Muslims to Christianity, said sources who fear she is being tortured. Meanwhile in Khartoum, the Christian mother of a 2-month-old baby is has been left destitute and injured because she and her husband left Islam for Christianity.In the Darfur Region, Hawa Abdalla Muhammad Saleh was arrested on May 9 in the Abu Shouk camp for Internally Displaced Persons in Al-Fashir. Abdalla has not yet been officially charged, but she is accused of possessing and distributing Bibles. She could also be tried for apostasy, which carries the death penalty.
Abdalla has been transferred to an unknown location in Khartoum, and there are fears she could be tortured as she was detained and tortured for six days in 2009. "There is no guarantee of her safety," said a source in Darfur.
In Khartoum, Omar Hassan and Amouna Ahamdi, both 27, said they fled Nyala, 120 kilometers southwest of El-Fashir, for Khartoum in June 2010, but knife-wielding, masked assailants attacked the couple on May 4, after relatives found out that they had converted. His wife was wounded trying to protect him during the May 4 attack.
"I have been in Khartoum for six months, with no job to support my sick wife," said Hassan. "Muslims invaded our house and, in an attempt to kill me, they knifed my wife in the hand."
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. "I feel pain, but my husband is alive, and we are praying that we get money for treatment for both my hand and the spleen," she said.
In the violent outburst, her brother also broke her left leg. She was rushed to a local hospital, where they were reluctant to treat her because of her conversion. Ultimately she was hospitalized in another hospital for three weeks -- where she met Hassan, another recent convert who had also suffered for his faith, who visited her after hearing about her plight.