Death sentence for reporter in occupied Afghanistan - Let freedom reign!

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/01/23/afghanistan.journalist/index.html?eref=rss_world

(CNN) -- A student journalist sentenced to death in northern Afghanistan for allegedly blaspheming Islam may actually be paying the price for investigative pieces that his brother wrote, an international media group said Wednesday.

Those articles exposed human rights abuses by political and paramilitary factions in northern Afghanistan, said the Institute for War & Peace Reporting.

"(The brother) feels very strongly that it's a campaign of intimidation against him and others like him who might want to take on these powerful commanders," Jean Mackenzie, country director of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, told CNN.

The international organization trains journalists Afghanistan and other conflict zones.

A lower court in Mazar-e-Sharif on Tuesday sentenced Sayed Perwiz Kaambaksh, 23, to death Tuesday, after it tried him behind closed doors and without representation, MacKenzie said.

Prosecutors accused Kaambaksh of anti-Islam propaganda, contending that the third-year journalism student downloaded a document from the Internet last October that criticized Islam's position on women.

That remains to be seen. Thanks for the post.