The young Afghan journalist, Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, who was sentenced to death for downloading internet material said to be offensive to Islam, has been granted an appeal, reports Bloomberg.
Jean MacKenzie, programme director in Afghanistan for the Institute for war & peace reporting credits international protests as a key factor in ensuring that Pervez was removed from the clutches of religious authorities in the remote province of Balkh. He is now in prison in Kabul.
She also said that, within Afghanistan, protests in several cities organised by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, a banned group, had helped to make people aware of the case.
"Privately, sources in the government have assured the family that Pervez will be released, but the family are not yet certain of that,'' said MacKenzie.
Kambaksh, a journalism student at Balkh university and correspondent for Jahan-e-Naw (The New World), a local daily in the Balkh city of Mazar-i-Sharif, was arrested last October and charged with downloading and distributing anti-Islamic propaganda. It concerned the role of women in Islamic society.
According to a report from PEN, the international organisation of writers and editors, the material "allegedly said the Prophet Mohammed ignored women's rights.''
A local trial was held on January 22. But Kambaksh said he was not allowed to speak. "They just handed me a piece of paper on which it was written that I had been sentenced to death."
News of the death sentence sparked protests from human rights and journalists' organisations. In Britain, The Independent led the way with a petition that attracted thousands of signatures.
