Mariam Ibrahim declares she will campaign for religious freedom

Mariam Ibrahim, the Sudanese woman who escaped a death sentence imposed for refusing to renounce her Christian faith, has announced that she wants to campaign on the issue of religious freedom, writes Ellen Teague. Speaking from the US, where she has lived since June and is seeking asylum, Ms Ibrahim told the BBC that while she was in court, “the judge told me that I needed to convert to Islam. And so these warnings made me anticipate I would be sentenced to death. Sadly, this was all under the guise of the law. So instead of protecting people, the law is harming them,” she said.

The murder of a French mountain guide, Hervé Gourdel, in Algeria last week, by a group linked to Islamic State terrorists, has prompted protests by French Muslims, writes Tom Heneghan. Leading Muslim politicians and intellectuals issued an open letter saying they were also “dirty French” – the term Islamists used when they threatened to kill French citizens over French air strikes in Iraq.