Intellectual Property Law

Earlier this year I published a post about a 24-year-old journalism student in Afghanistan who was sentenced to death for asking "disruptive" questions in class and for downloading and distributing a report to other students that was critical of the unequal treatment of women in some Islamic societies.

Sayed Pervez Kambaksh (at right in a Kabul courtroom with his defense attorney) was tried and sentenced to death for blasphemy last January without having a defense attorney to argue his case.

Tuesday, an appeals court commuted the death sentence to 20 years.

Five witnesses appeared before the court, four of whom condemned Kambaksh for violating the tenets of Islam. The fifth witness retracted accusations he'd made earlier that Kambaksh had committed blasphemy and also revealed that he'd been forced to make the accusation by members of Afghanistan's intelligence service and by a professor who had threatened to expel him from university.

Photo: Rahmat Gul/AP See also:

• Afghan Student Sentenced to Death After Downloading Report