THE INDEPENDENT: Pervez Kambaksh, the Afghan student sentenced to death after being accused of downloading internet reports on women's rights, yesterday pleaded innocent to charges of blasphemy. He told an appeal court in Kabul that he had been tortured into confessing.
Mr Kambaksh, 24, vehemently denied that he had been responsible for producing anti-Islamic literature. He insisted the prosecution had been motivated by personal malice of two members of staff and their student supporters at the university in Balkh, where he was studying journalism.
He was convicted in proceedings behind closed doors in a trial which he said had lasted just four minutes and where he had been denied legal representation.
Yesterday, in the first public hearing of the case, the prosecution claimed that Mr Kambaksh had disrupted classes at the university by asking questions about women's rights under Islam. It also said he distributed an article on the subject after writing an additional three paragraphs including the phrase "This is the real face of Islam ... The prophet Mohamad wrote verses of the holy Koran just for his own benefit."
In a highly emotional statement, Mr Kambaksh said: "I'm Muslim and I would never let myself write such an article. These accusations are nonsense, [they] come from two professors and other students because of private hostilities against me. I was tortured by the intelligence service in Balkh province and they made me confess that I wrote three paragraphs in this article."
Mr Kambaksh represented himself because his family are having difficulties finding a lawyer to represent him after threats by fundamentalist groups that anyone taking on the job would be killed. I Was Tortured to Confess, Pervez Tells Appeal Court >>> By Kim Sengupta | May 19, 2008
Galloway audio on Afghanistan: ‘Afghanistan to Execute Student for Blasphemy’ >>>
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