Media News - Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Afghanistan’s Senate endorses reporter’s death sentence: official

Afghanistan's senate has endorsed a death sentence handed down by a court to a reporter and journalism student accused of blasphemy, the parliament media office said Wednesday. The senate, called the Meshrano Jirga (House of Elders), issued a statement Tuesday backing last week's decision by the Balkh province primary court and criticising international pressure over the case, an official told AFP. The court sentenced Perwiz Kambakhsh, 23, to death for distributing articles downloaded from the Internet that were said to question the Koran and the role of women in Islam. The house also ‘strongly criticises those domestic and international organisations which are pressurising Afghanistan's government and legal authorities when pursuing such people,’ it said. The statement was signed Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, the head of the senate who was briefly Afghan president in the early 1990s and is a close ally President Hamid Karzai. The death sentence must pass through various higher courts and be approved by Karzai, who has been called on by international and Afghan media rights organisations to intervene in the case. (AFP)

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