has generated much controversy
By Alastair Leithead
In Kabul's grim and crowded central prison, a 23-year-old student from northern Afghanistan spends each day wondering if and when he will be put to death.
Sayed Pervez Kambaksh was sentenced in January, in five minutes, at a local court in Mazar-e-Sharif, with no legal representation to defend charges of blasphemy after reports he had downloaded from the internet un-Islamic material on women's rights.
"I don't know what will happen to me," he said from the prison office where we were allowed half an hour to interview him.
"My trial was unfair from the beginning. From day one, they have been treating me very harshly as a criminal, not a suspect, and I don't know who has done this to me.
President Karzai has to approve
any death sentence "My case has been politicised - my lawyer has been threatened. I have lost nine months of my life now in four prisons," he said.
'Deviated from religion'
There is an appeals process but his family have little faith in it - there have been many delays and little information.
The international community has raised the issue and asked for Sayed Pervez Kambaksh to be pardoned or released, but the case is a glaring example of the conflict between conservative Islam and the liberal Western views of Afghanistan's international backers.
"Kambaksh has deviated from religion, and Islam orders that he must be executed," said Enayatullah Baleegh, a member of the Islamic ulema council and a popular and well-respected Muslim scholar. Read more ...
In Kabul's grim and crowded central prison, a 23-year-old student from northern Afghanistan spends each day wondering if and when he will be put to death.
Sayed Pervez Kambaksh was sentenced in January, in five minutes, at a local court in Mazar-e-Sharif, with no legal representation to defend charges of blasphemy after reports he had downloaded from the internet un-Islamic material on women's rights.
"I don't know what will happen to me," he said from the prison office where we were allowed half an hour to interview him.
"My trial was unfair from the beginning. From day one, they have been treating me very harshly as a criminal, not a suspect, and I don't know who has done this to me.
any death sentence
'Deviated from religion'
There is an appeals process but his family have little faith in it - there have been many delays and little information.
The international community has raised the issue and asked for Sayed Pervez Kambaksh to be pardoned or released, but the case is a glaring example of the conflict between conservative Islam and the liberal Western views of Afghanistan's international backers.
"Kambaksh has deviated from religion, and Islam orders that he must be executed," said Enayatullah Baleegh, a member of the Islamic ulema council and a popular and well-respected Muslim scholar. Read more ...
Source: BBC
H/T: Shariah Finance Watch
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