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Afghan Court Gives Editor 2-Year Term for Blasphemy

October 24th, 2005 1:38 pm
By Abdul Waheed Wafa & Carlotta Gall / The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 23 - For the first time since the fall of the Taliban's Islamic government four years ago, a journalist has been convicted by a Kabul court under the country's blasphemy laws.

Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, the editor of a monthly magazine for women called Women's Rights, was sentenced Saturday to two years in prison by the primary court in Kabul. The sentence will automatically go to appeal.

The sentencing came after a strenuous battle between Kabul's conservative judges, led by members of the Supreme Court, and the liberal minister of information and culture, Sayed Makhdum Raheen, and revealed the strains between moderates and conservatives in the government of President Hamid Karzai.

The prosecutor called for the death penalty, accusing the editor of apostasy, the abandonment of the faith, so the sentence appeared to have been a compromise. But it was a reminder that Afghanistan is still ruled by the Islamic legal code, Shariah, and that on issues of religion, conservatives are determined to enforce it. >>cont

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