KHARTOUM: A Christian Sudanese woman, sentenced to hang for apostasy in a case that has sparked international outcry, has given birth in jail, her husband said Tuesday.

“Until now I did not see them. They didn’t allow me to go in and see,” Daniel Wani told AFP.

“I’m disappointed really,” he said from a prisons office where he was continuing efforts to see his wife and newborn daughter.

Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag, 27, is being held at a women’s prison in Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman.

Wani said he and his wife have not yet chosen a name for their baby.

Ishag already has a 20-month old son, who is also incarcerated with her, rights activists say.

A Khartoum-area court sentenced her to death on May 15.

Born to a Muslim father, she was convicted under Shariah.

Wani said he is normally granted a weekly visit to the prison but had sought special permission to see his wife again after she gave birth.

Ishag was “frustrated” when he saw her on Monday, he said.

“We weren’t able to speak. There is a guard sitting there beside us,” said Wani, a Christian who says he was born in Khartoum. “The mother and the baby seem to be doing OK,” a Western diplomat who is familiar with Ishag’s case told AFP.

Judge Abbas Mohammed Al-Khalifa said as he passed the verdict against Ishag after she refused to recant.

Khalifa also sentenced her to 100 lashes for “adultery.” In Sudan, a Muslim woman cannot marry a non-Muslim man and any such relationship is regarded as adulterous.

Amnesty International said Ishag was raised as an Orthodox Christian, her mother’s religion, because her Muslim father was absent. The Citizen newspaper, in an earlier editorial, said members of Ishag’s family filed the court case “for other hidden purposes.”

Wani refused to comment on what was behind the legal action against his wife.

The woman would be allowed to nurse her baby for two years after the birth, before any death sentence is carried out, legal experts have said.

If she is hanged, Ishag will be the first person executed for apostasy under the 1991 penal code.