Afghan student Sayed Parvez Kambakhsh has been freed from prison after he was secretly pardon by Afghanistan’s President Karzai. Kambakhsh was sentenced to death, commuted to imprisonment, after he was accused of circulating an article that questioned the role of women in the Quran.
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We must do everything in our power to secure the release of the young Afghan journalist, says Padraig Reidy
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Disturbing news from Afghanistan. Sayed Parvez Kambakhsh, the young journalist whose death sentence for ‘blasphemy’, passed in a four-minute trial in Mazar-i-Sharif, provoked international outrage last year, has apparently been sentenced to 20 years in prison by Afghanistan’s Supreme Court.
After Kambakhsh was allowed to appeal the original death sentence, it was widely hoped that a Supreme Court trial would lead to an acquittal, or, failing that, a pardon from President Karzai.
However, a letter appearing on the Kabul Press website, said to be from Sayed’s brother Yaqub, claims that Sayed was sentenced last month, with neither press nor public informed of the decision.
You can read the letter here
Sayed Parvez Kambakhsh’s ordeal is part of the battle for the soul of Afghanistan, writes Harun Najafizada
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