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Afghan sentenced to death over `anti-Islamic' paper

A man sells newspapers at a roadside stall in Kabul yesterday. A court in devoutly Islamic Afghanistan has sentenced a local journalist to death for blasphemy, an official and family members said. PHOTO: AFP

An Afghan court sentenced a 23-year-old journalism student to death for distributing a paper he printed off the Internet that three judges said violated the tenets of Islam, an official said.

The three-judge panel sentenced Sayad Parwez Kambaksh on Tuesday to death for distributing a paper that humiliated Islam, said Fazel Wahab, the chief judge in the northern province of Balkh, where the trial took place. Wahab did not preside over the trial.

Kambaksh's family and the head of a journalists group denounced the verdict and said Kambaksh had not been represented by a lawyer at trial.

Members of a clerics council had been pushing for Kambaksh to be punished.

The case now goes to the first of two appeals courts, Wahab said. Kambaksh will remain in custody during appeal; he has been in jail since October, Wahab said.

Wahab said he did not immediately have the details of the paper that Kambaksh circulated, other than that it was against Islam. Kambaksh discussed the paper with his teacher and classmates at Balkh University, and several students complained to the government, Wahab said.

Clerics in Balkh and Kunduz province arranged a demonstration in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif last week against Kambaksh, calling on the government not to release him.

Kambaksh also works as a journalist for the Jahan-i-Naw newspaper in Mazar-i-Sharif.

Kambaksh's brother, Yacoubi Brahimi, described Tuesday's proceeding as a "secret trial," saying the family did not know it had been scheduled.

Some have accused Kambaksh of writing the paper in question, but Brahimi said that his brother printed it off the Internet.

"He told them he didn't write this article," Brahimi said. "It was written by an Iranian."

Wahab said Kambaksh told the court that he could defend himself and did not need a lawyer.

But Kambaksh's brother said that his brother should have had an attorney.

Wahab said only Afghan President Hamid Karzai could forgive Kambaksh because the student had confessed to violating the tenets of Islam.

Rhimullah Samandar, head of the Kabul-based National Journalists Union of Afghanistan, said Kambaksh had been sentenced to death under Article 130 of the Afghan Constitution. That article says that if no law exists regarding an issue, the court's decision should be in accord with Hanafi jurisprudence.

Hanafi is an orthodox school of Sunni Muslim jurisprudence followed in parts of southern and central Asia.

Samandar called for Karzai to intervene.

"We completely condemn this trial," Samandar said. "It goes against the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press."
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