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Activists Call on President Biden to End the Federal Death Penalty Before Leaving Office

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A conversation with Death Penalty Action Co-founder and Executive Director Abe Bonowitz. Now that Joe Biden is a lame duck president, activists are holding him accountable to make good on his promise to end the federal death penalty during his remaining six months as president. Biden’s election campaign in 2020 had pledged to end the federal death penalty and incentivize the remaining 27 states that still allow executions to do the same. While he made history as the first president in the United States to openly oppose the death penalty, there has been no movement to actually end federal executions during his nearly four years in office.

Meriam Ibrahim: Sudanese apostasy woman freed from death row is re-arrested at airport... and then released again

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Meriam Ibrahim and her husband
Mariam Yahya Ibrahim, the Christian woman sentenced to death and later freed after an international outcry, was briefly re-arrested while trying to leave the country for the US before being released again.

Eman Abdul-Rahim, a lawyer representing Ms Ibrahim, said she had been held along with her two children and husband at the international airport in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital. The BBC reported that Ms Ibrahim, whose death sentence in May for renouncing Islam sparked international outrage, was detained by around 40 security agents, but was then released again by Sudanese authorities.

That came 24 hours after her husband, Daniel Wani, who has US citizenship, had said the family would go to the US after his wife was released.

The 27-year-old, whose father was Muslim but who was raised by her Christian mother, was convicted of apostasy for marrying a Christian. Sudan’s penal code forbids Muslims from converting to other religions, a crime punishable by death.


Source: The Independent, June 24, 2014
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