Court secretly sentences Pervez Kambaksh for downloading a report from the internet

Worldwide outrage over Pervez Kambaksh's death sentence was sparked after The Independent reported his plight in January 2008. The Government raised the matter directly with Afghanistan after more than 100,000 Independent readers signed the petition and in October 2008 a Kabul appeals court lifted the death sentence.



A young man, a student of journalism, is sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading a report from the internet. The sentence is then upheld by the country's rulers. This is Afghanistan – not in Taliban times but six years after "liberation" and under the democratic rule of the West's ally Hamid Karzai.

For Kambaksh the four-minute hearing has led to four months of incarceration, sharing a 10 by 12 metre cell with 34 others and having the threat of execution constantly hanging over him. His fate appeared sealed when the Afghan senate passed a motion, proposed by Sibghatullkah Mojeddeid, a key ally of the President Hamid Karzai, confirming the death sentence, although this was later withdrawn after domestic and international protests.

The fate of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh has led to domestic and international protests, and deepening concern about erosion of civil liberties in Afghanistan. He was accused of blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed.

Mr Kambaksh, 23, distributed the tract to fellow students and teachers at Balkh University with the aim, he said, of provoking a debate on the matter. But a complaint was made against him and he was arrested, tried by religious judges without – say his friends and family – being allowed legal representation and sentenced to death.


On 27 October, 2007 he was arrested at the offices of Jahan-e-Naw, a newspaper for which he had carried out reporting assignments. On 6 December, 2007 he was brought before a court in Mazar where the charges against him, accusing him of blasphemy and breaching other tenets of Islamic law, were read out. But then the proceedings concluded without any evidence being presented before the court.

The next hearing, on 12 January, 2008 was cancelled after Mr Kambaksh became ill. He arrived at the court at the next session, on 22 January, 2008 expecting a date to be set for the trial, only to hear numbing news that he has been found guilty and the sentence was death.

In February, 2009 the Supreme Court Judge Bahauddin Baha vowed the appeal would be held in "a very open court" but that promise has proved hollow.

VIA

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