Student will face 'justice of mob' if released early

Ed: This reminds of those great lyrics by Jackson Browne to Solider of Plenty. The context was different, but 'the song remains the same':

God is great, God is good
He guards your neighborhood
Though it's generally understood
Not quite the way you would
You try to take the slack
Stay awake and watch his back
But something happens every now and then
And someone breaks into the promised land


Sayed Pervez Kambaksh will face mob justice in Afghanistan if he is ever released early, a leading religious scholar warned yesterday.

Mullah Enyatullah Balegh said the student journalist would be killed on the streets if his prayers for a presidential pardon come true. Mr Kambaksh, whose plight was brought to worldwide attention by a campaign in The Independent, must serve 20 years in jail after the country's Supreme Court upheld his blasphemy conviction without even hearing his defence.

Speaking at Kabul University's sharia faculty where he is a professor of Islamic law, Mullah Balegh said: "If he isn't punished, if he's released for any reason, the jihadis will kill him, the criminals will kill him, the Taliban will kill him, everyone will want to kill him."

Mullah Balegh, who sits on Afghanistan's influential Ulemma Council of Islamic Scholars, said Mr Kambaksh had committed a heinous crime against Islam. "If somebody attacks me with a knife, he is a criminal," he said. "If somebody attacks my religion, is he not a criminal too?" Read more
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