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Afghan journalist jailed for blasphemy goes free
Mon Sep 7, 2009 9:52am EDT
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By Jonathon Burch
KABUL (Reuters) - An Afghan journalist, sentenced to death for blasphemy, reduced to 20 years' jail on appeal, has been set free and is living in exile in an undisclosed country, a media watchdog said Monday.
Perwiz Kambakhsh, 24, a reporter with the Afghan Jahan-e Now daily, was sentenced to death in January 2008 by a court in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
Kambakhsh was arrested and imprisoned for downloading and distributing an Iranian article from the Internet that said the Prophet Mohammad had ignored the rights of women.
Under Islamic law -- stipulated in Afghanistan's constitution -- blasphemy is punishable by death.
"It is with considerable emotion that we welcome the release of Perwiz Kambakhsh," Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RWB), which campaigns for press freedom, said on Monday.
"It is critical that he now be allowed to rebuild his life after practically two years in detention. For fear of reprisals, he has been taken in by a foreign country."
In a statement put out in French on its website, RWB said Kambakhsh's lawyer had confirmed to them Monday his release and that President Hamid Karzai had signed a pardon several weeks earlier. Karzai's office was not immediately available for comment.
Earlier this year, RWB warned that press freedom in Afghanistan had become worse and threats against Afghan journalists had risen in recent years.
Threats against Afghan journalists were mostly in the form of attacks or kidnappings by Taliban insurgents and criminal gangs. Two Afghan journalists were killed and some 50 were either threatened or attacked in 2008 alone, RWB said.
The arrest and sentencing of Kambakhsh, also a university student, drew criticism from a number of Western nations, the Afghan media and rights groups.
"The Perwiz Kambakhsh affair will remain a judicial lapse marked by religious intolerance, ill treatment by police and incompetence by certain judges," said RWB Secretary General Jean-Francois Julliard in the statement released Monday.
"This case should prompt the Afghan authorities to put an end to the politicization of the offence of 'blasphemy'."
(Additional reporting by Ron Popeski in SINGAPORE; Editing by Nick Macfie)
© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved
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