Journalist sentenced to death in Bush’s ‘new’ Afghanistan

This video from ABC in the USA is called Corrupt Afghan Government.

From Associated Press:

Afghan Journalist Sentenced to Death

By AMIR SHAH

KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan court on Tuesday 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 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 was not represented by a lawyer at trial. …

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,” said Brahimi. “It was written by an Iranian.” …

Rhimullah Samandar, the 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 than a court’s decision should be in accord with Hanafi jurisprudence.

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

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

According to Dutch daily NRC, paper edition, 23 January 2008, page 5:

About the content of the article the only thing which has been published is that in it, q’uran verses were “interpreted wrongly”.

Update: here.

And here.

Afghan Journalism Student Allegedly Tortured: here.

So much for George W. Bush’s talk about “bringing democracy” to his “new” Afghanistan. Like with Afghan women‘s rights. Video about the situation for Afghan women: here.