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Afghan court convicts editor of blasphemy

"He could not provide a defense against the prosecutor and was found guilty of disrespecting Islamic law."

Ansarullah Maulavizada, chief of the public security tribunal

For the first time since the fall of the Taliban's Islamic government four years ago, a journalist has been convicted by a Kabul court under the country's blasphemy laws.

Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, the editor of a monthly magazine for women called Women's Rights, was sentenced Saturday to two years in prison by Kabul's primary court. The sentence will automatically go to appeal.

The sentencing came after a strenuous battle between Kabul's conservative judges, led by members of the Supreme Court, and the liberal minister of information and culture, Sayed Makhdum Raheen, and revealed the strain between moderates and conservatives in the government of President Hamid Karzai.

As the prosecutor called for the death penalty, accusing the editor of apostasy, the abandonment of the faith, the sentence appeared to have been a compromise. But it is a reminder that Afghanistan is still ruled by the Islamic legal code, Shariah, and that on issues of religion, conservatives are determined to enforce it.

"He could not provide a defense against the prosecutor and was found guilty of disrespecting Islamic law and was convicted to two years' imprisonment," said Ansarullah Maulavizada, chief of the public security tribunal in charge of the case.

He contended that the magazine had run two articles in its latest issue about apostasy that violated the law by saying that while apostasy was taboo, it was not a crime under Islam.

The authorities apparently ordered the issue be removed from newsstands.

Raheen, the information and culture minister, said, however, that the court had bypassed a commission that was supposed to make a recommendation in cases involving the news media, and that the commission had found no blasphemy after examining the articles.

Nasab, an Afghan who lived in Iran as a refugee, is an Islamic scholar and has degrees from more than one Islamic university there, Raheen said.
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