Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, a 23-year-old journalist, was arrested in Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of the northern province of Balkh, on 27 October 2007 on charges of blasphemy and “disseminating defamatory comments about Islam.” Under repeated pressure from the Council of Mullahs and local officials, a Mazar-i-Sharif court sentenced him to death on 22 January 2008 at the end of a trial held behind closed doors in which he was not defended by a lawyer.

A journalism student at Balkh university and a reporter for the newspaper Jahan-e-Naw (“The New World”), Kambakhsh was arrested after downloading an article that analyses what the Koran says about women. It has been established that he is not the author of the controversial article, which came from an Iranian website.

Rahimullah Samandar, the head of the Afghanistan Independent Journalists Association, says his arrest is linked to articles written by his brother, Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, criticising the Balkh provincial authorities. Ibrahimi says the verdict is “unjust” and urges the international community to support his brother.