Our "new, improved" Afghanistan

Afghan journalist sentenced to death
By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer
22 Jan 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan - An Afghan court on Tuesday sentenced a 23-year-old journalism student to death for distributing a paper he printed off the Internet that three judges said violated the tenets of Islam, an official said.

Note: this is not the verdict of a Taliban court, but an Afghan court constituted under the new Constitution, and it is to the new Constitution that the court points to justify the verdict:

"Rhimullah Samandar, the head of the Kabul-based National Journalists Union of Afghanistan, said Kambaksh had been sentenced to death under Article 130 of the Afghan constitution. That article says that if no law exists regarding an issue than a court's decision should be in accord with Hanafi jurisprudence.

Hanafi is an orthodox school of Sunni Muslim jurisprudence followed in southern and central Asia.

The good news? The verdict isn't final:

"The case now goes to the first of two appeals courts..."

In the end it may take the direct intervention of Afghan President Karzai to free Sayad Parwez Kambaksh. (I seem to recall that there is precedent for this, with Karzai having intervened in another "insult to Islam" death sentence sometime within the past year... the details now elude me.)

Stop the madness!