The husband of persecuted Sudanese Christian Meriam Ibrahim spoke out this week regarding the terrorism his family faced from a secret police force known as the "Agents of Fear".
Daniel Wani said that the agents intercepted his family in the Khartoum International Airport as they were trying to leave the country last month.
Ibrahim was arrested in January and sentenced to death for apostasy after she married Wani, a Christian man.
Although she was raised by an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian mother, Ibrahim is considered Muslim under Sharia law because that is the faith of her estranged father. Her sentence was overturned on appeal on June 23.
Ibrahim, her husband, and their children, Martin, 21-months-old, and Maya, two-months-old, tried to leave the country the day after the appeal decision, but were arrested at the airport for allegedly possessing false travel documents.
"We got the papers," Wani told the Daily Mail. "We got permission to travel through the VIP area. I don't know why they did that, it's stupid. They made a mistake and wanted to cover it up and they didn't have a stop order."
Wani said that the Agents of Fear tried to beat them up, and that their attorneys were assaulted and had to flee the scene.
"When they came to us I said, 'Do you have a stop order?' They said 'no' and they started to use force, they just threw the lawyers out of the airport, beat them.
"It was terrifying, secret service personnel, national security. It's a lot. They took us, when they started to use force against my wife I said to her, 'Don't resist and just go.'
"They had to cover up what they did, making this decision."
After living in the US Embassy for weeks, the family was released to Europe, and traveled to the United States this week. Wani, Ibrahim, and their children are now living in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Wani is relieved to put the several months of drama behind him.
"It feels real," he said. "It's good to be home.
"I was born in Sudan, but I tell people I'm from here (New Hampshire)."
