Freedom? What freedom?

[debgeisler]

Today's Boston Globe online has this story about a 23-year-old journalism student in Afghanistan who has been sentenced to death for distributing an article considered to insult the prophet Mohammad. (He was also denied a defense counsel.)

KABUL, Afghanistan - An Afghan court in the northern part of the country sentenced a journalism student to death for blasphemy for distributing an article from the Internet that was considered an insult to the Prophet Mohammad, the judge in charge of the court said yesterday.

The student, Sayed Parwiz Kambakhsh, 23, who also works on a local newspaper, was charged with directly insulting Mohammad by calling him "a killer and adulterer," the judge, Shamsurahman Muhmand, said in a telephone interview.

The sentence was denounced as unfair by Kambakhsh's family and journalists' organizations. Kambakhsh's brother, Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, denied his brother had committed blasphemy, and said his brother was not given enough time to prepare his defense for the trial and was denied a defense lawyer.

Let my country never return to a time when an unpalatable belief is met with death.