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Save Parwiz Kambaksh: Protect Blasphemy in Afghanistan

The Center for Inquiry urges the Afghan government to release Sayed Parwiz Kambakhsh, a 24-year-old journalism student at Balkh University and reporter for the local daily Jahan-e-Naw (The New World), sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment for insulting Islam.

Mr. Kambakhsh was arrested on October 27, 2007, in Mazar-i-Sharif, Balkh province, for allegedly downloading and distributing material from a Farsi website which suggested that the Qur'an and Prophet Muhammad legitimize the oppression of women.

On January 22, 2008, Kambakhsh was brought before a Islamic court, without a lawyer or public oversight. Accused of un-Islamic speech and activity, socialism, rebelliousness, and improper instigation of religious debate, he was convicted of blasphemy by the court and sentenced to death.  Later that year a Kabul appeals court commuted the death sentence to 20 years' imprisonment.  On February 12, 2009 the Afghan Supreme Court met in secret, without informing Kambakhsh's defense attorneys or his family, and upheld the 20-year prison sentence.  News of the Supreme Court's decision only came to light when the attorney general's office later issued orders to enforce it

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