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How he was sentenced to die

'What they call my trial lasted just four minutes in a closed court. I was told that I was guilty and the decision was that I was going to die'


Pervez Kambaksh has been attacked by other prisoners

By Kim Sengupta in Mazar-I-Sharif, Afghanistan


Clutching the bars at his prison, Sayed Pervez Kambaksh recalls how his life unravelled. "There was no question of me getting a lawyer to represent me in the case; in fact I was not even able to speak on my own defence."

The 23-year-old student, whose death sentence for downloading a report on women's rights from the internet has become an international cause célèbre, was speaking to The Independent at his jail in Mazar-i-Sharif – the first time the outside world has heard his own account of his shattering experience. In a voice soft, somewhat hesitant, he said: "The judges had made up their mind about the case without me. The way they talked to me, looked at me, was the way they look at a condemned man. I wanted to say 'this is wrong, please listen to me', but I was given no chance to explain."

For Mr Kambaksh the four-minute hearing has led to four months of incarceration, sharing a 10 by 12 metre cell with 34 others -- murderers, robbers and terrorists – and having the threat of execution constantly hanging over him. His fate appeared sealed when the Afghan senate passed a motion, proposed by Sibghatullkah Mojeddeid, a key ally of the President Hamid Karzai, confirming the death sentence, although this was later withdrawn after domestic and international protests.

I spoke to Mr Kambaksh at Balkh prison, under the watchful eyes of the warders in their olive green Russian-era uniforms. Here 360 prisoners are packed into a facility for 200, in conditions even the Afghan prison authorities acknowledge are "unacceptable". The inmates, who include 22 women, many convicted of deserting their husbands and adultery, sit around with the forlorn demeanour of those caught up in a vast bureaucratic system with little chance of an early exit.

Since The Independent exposed the case of Mr Kambaksh, eminent public figures such as the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. and Britain's Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, have lobbied Mr Karzai to reprieve him. A petition launched by this newspaper calling for justice for Mr Kambaksh has gathered nearly 90,000 signatures.

Standing outside his cell, Mr Kambaksh looked pale and tired, hunched into his brown leather jacket over a dusty white shalwar kameez against the cold, cutting wind of the northern mountains. He had, in the past, been attacked by fundamentalist prisoners at the instigation of a guard who had said he was a heretic, but the intimidation has tailed off in recent weeks. "I am very thankful for what The Independent has done and the publicity in this case. Most of my fellow prisoners know now that I had not done anything so terrible to deserve this, and they have supported me. Some of the guards have also been kind.

"There are still some extremists who insult me, but I am afraid they are the kind who will not change their minds."

Mr Kambaksh's ordeal began in mid- October after the downloading of the document about Islam and women's rights from an Iranian website. He was questioned first by some teachers of religion from the university where he is a student of journalism.

"They said that some other students had said that I had written the article myself. Of course I denied this, I also asked them who these other students were, but they would not give me the names. They have since repeated these accusations, but they have never told me who these students are. I do not know if they exist ..." His voice trailed off as a guard came and stood listening to him. Not all believe in Mr Kambaksh's innocence.

On 27 October he was arrested at the offices of Jahan-e-Naw, a newspaper for which he had carried out reporting assignments. "It was about 10 in the morning. They told me that one of the directors of the NDS [the Afghan national intelligence service] wanted to see me. I was taken to a police station and sat around until 3 o'clock when they said they were arresting me over the website entry. When I protested they said they were doing this for my own safety, otherwise I may be killed."

Mr Kambaksh received visits from his family in the weeks which followed but says that he was not allowed any access to a lawyer. "My family were upset, my father is so worried, I have seen him age in the last few months. I keep telling them to be strong."

On 6 December he was brought before a court in Mazar where the charges against him, accusing him of blasphemy and breaching other tenets of Islamic law, were read out. But then the proceedings concluded without any evidence being presented before the court.

The next hearing, on 12 January, was cancelled after Mr Kambaksh became ill. He arrived at the court at the next session, on 22 January expecting a date to be set for the trial, only to hear numbing news. "They normally sit for just a few hours in the afternoon. I was taken into the court just before it shut at 4 o'clock. There were three judges and a prosecutor and some details of the case were repeated. One of the judges then said to me that I have been found guilty and the sentence was death. I tried to argue, but, as I said, they talked to me like a criminal, they just said I would be taken back to the prison.

"I was totally shocked. Afterwards I sat and tried to calculate just how long they had taken to judge my case. I thought at first it was three minutes, but then I worked out it was four. That was it, I have been in prison ever since. All I can hope now is that something can be done at the appeal. I would really like the appeal to be heard in Kabul, I think I will get a better hearing there."

Following the international outcry over the case, and the campaign by Mr Kambaksh's supporters, Afghanistan's Supreme Court has said that the appeal may take place at Kabul, away from local justice in Mazar, and that the hearing this time would be in the open. Justice Bahahuddin Baha also stated that the student would have the right to legal representation.

"I think if I get to put over my point of view then the judges will see I have done nothing wrong. But then I was entitled under the constitution to have a lawyer and put my defence the last time and that did not happen. I have heard that President Karzai has taken an interest in my case. He can reprieve me, but I do not know what kind of pressure he is under."

Pilgrims killed as al-Qa'ida resume Iraq attacks





A suicide bomber detonated an explosive belt in a tent filled with Shia pilgrims walking to one of their holiest shrines south of Baghdad, killing at least 40 of them and wounding 60.

The attack shows that al-Qa'ida has restarted its bombings of Shia Iraqis, whom it sees as heretics, and remains capable of launching numerous suicide attacks on the same day in different parts of Iraq.

The claim by the US military of a significant drop in violence in Iraq is being dented by a rise in sectarian killings and by the Turkish invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan last Thursday in pursuit of Turkish Kurd PKK guerrillas.

People taking part in the traditional Arbain procession to Kerbala, commemorating the 40th day of mourning after the martyrdom of Imam Hussein in AD680, had stopped at a refreshment tent near the town of Iskandariyah 30 miles south of Baghdad. As the pilgrims ate and drank a bomb exploded, spraying metal ball bearings in all directions.

"When we reached the area people invited us into a tent to take some rest and have some food," said Um Hamr, a woman injured by the blast. "When we entered, there was a huge ball of fire and we saw people lying on the ground."

A local official Saleh al-Massoudi said: "The blast devastated the entire tent, which was about 20 metres long and four metres wide."

Earlier gunmen attacked pilgrims with machine guns and grenades as they walked past the Sunni district of Dora in south Baghdad, killing three and wounding 36 of them. Though 40,000 police have been mobilised the millions of pilgrims are impossible to protect.

The explosion, coming after two suicide bombers killed 99 people in two bird markets in Shia areas of Baghdad on 1 February, bears all the hall marks an al-Qa'ida attack. If Shia civilians continue to be targeted then the Shia militias may resume tit-for-tat killings of Sunni, reigniting the Shia-Sunni civil war of 2006 and early 2007. Al-Qaida was seriously weakened by a Sunni backlash last year led by al-Sahwa, the Awakening Councils made up of guerrillas previously fighting the American forces. But there are growing signs that al-Qa'ida has reorganised and is still able to recruit and equip many suicide bombers.

Three men wearing suicide belts stormed a checkpoint at Saqlawiyah, 45 miles west of Baghdad on Saturday, killing Sheikh Ibrahim Mutayri al-Mohamaday, the local leader of al-Sahwa.

In northern Iraq Turkish soldiers and PKK – Kurdistan Workers' Party – rebels are continuing to fight in the mountains in the largest Turkish offensive into Iraq in a decade. The PKK says it shot down a Turkish Cobra helicopter. The loss is admitted by the Turkish military though it does not say how the aircraft was lost. Turkey's general staff says that 15 Turkish soldiers and 115 guerrillas have been killed so far. The PKK claims that 47 Turkish troops and two rebels have died.

"The bombings are continuing by land and air, the clashes are becoming heavier," a Turkish military source said. Twenty-five more tanks have been sent to the region. A senior Turkish officer said that two brigades of 8,000 men were taking part.

The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is to send a special envoy to Baghdad this week to discuss the incursion. He will not meet the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki who is in London for a check up on his heart. Turkey refuses to talk to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

The inability of the government in Baghdad and its US supporters to prevent the Turkish army invading northern Iraq at will is damaging to their authority. The Turkish invasion is probably doing more damage to the KRG than it is to the PKK, whose 2,500 fighters in the area can take refuge in deep valleys and hidden bunkers. The repeated Turkish attacks are fast eroding confidence in the future stability of Iraqi Kurdistan.
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Turkey to pull out of Iraq in days as US calls for swift end to conflict






Turkish tanks cross into northern Iraq from the Habur border near Turkey's south-eastern city of Diyarbakir. Photograph: EPA

Turkey's military operations against Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq will last another three or four days, a senior Turkish official said yesterday, after Washington called for a speedy end to the incursion.

Hours after the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, said Turkey must be "mindful of Iraqi sovereignty" and should not extend its operations longer than a week or two, the Turkish official said the cross-border operation would be over by next week. "Ten days will be a good enough time for the operation. It has been going on now for six or seven days, so another three or four days should wrap it up," the official said.

The bulk of the troops would be pulled back, he added, leaving an uninhabited cordon sanitaire on the south side of the border. In official comments so far, Turkish officials have refused to give a timetable for the operation, saying it would end when Kurdish guerrilla bases in Iraq had been uprooted.

The Turkish official, speaking on condition of anonymity, also claimed that the Iraqi government in Baghdad had consented to the offensive against forces of the Kurdistan Workers party (PKK) because it was unable to stop them launching cross-border raids on Turkey.

He said that before the assault began last Thursday there were substantial conversations between Turkey's president, Abdullah Gul, and his Iraqi opposite number, Jalal Talabani, and between the prime ministers of the two countries. In those conversations, the official said, the Iraqi leaders gave a green light.

"Iraq has been busy with security in the rest of the country, and they know that this [the PKK presence on Iraqi soil] was beyond their means at the moment," he said. The Baghdad government has committed itself, on Turkish and US insistence, to closing down PKK camps in the north, but has largely been blocked by the autonomous Iraqi Kurd administration there, which has refused to use its "peshmerga" fighters against fellow Kurds.

Iraqi officials in Baghdad have denied giving approval for the Turkish operations and have demanded an immediate Turkish withdrawal.

"We condemn the terrorists and the PKK, but we also condemn the violations of the sovereignty of Iraq at the same time and we have to be very clear on that," the Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said after meeting a Turkish envoy, Ahmet Davutoglu.

Turkey claims it has killed 230 PKK fighters, with the loss of about two dozen of its own soldiers. The PKK, which is fighting for Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey, says only a handful of its guerrillas have been killed, at the cost of 80 Turkish troops. The claims cannot be confirmed as the fighting is taking place in remote mountains along the border.

The Turkish official said 35% of PKK fighters were Syrian Kurds and complained that Damascus appeared to exercise little control over its border. However, he said there was limited intelligence cooperation with both Syria and Iran, who both have Kurdish minorities.

Gates headed for Ankara yesterday carrying a message from Washington calling for a quick withdrawal. "It's very important that the Turks make this operation as short as possible and then leave," he said before leaving India for Turkey. "They have to be mindful of Iraqi sovereignty. I measure quick in terms of days, a week or two, something like that, not months."
guardian

University attempts to calm storm caused by race abuse




By Ian Evans and Beauregard Tromp in Bloemfontein


The South African university at the centre of a racism storm kept black and white student accommodation separate over fears of "bloodshed", its vice-chancellor said.

Professor Frederick Fourie said forcing the races to mix at the University of the Free State could have resulted in violence in the late 1990s, and so the issue of integration drifted to a stalemate.

Yesterday the university in Bloemfontein which was once a bastion of Afrikaner higher education was calm after two days of demonstrations following the release of a video showing four white students humiliating five black elderly cleaners in an apparent snub to integration. In the 69-second video the four students from the white, male-only Reitz hostel are heard referring to the old Boer way of life before convincing the four women and one man to drink beer, run races, play rugby and then kneel and eat meat which had been urinated upon.

The names and faces of the students were spread across the front pages of South African papers, with some labelling them "the presenter, the learner, the urinator and the fear factor host" after their differing involvement in the footage.

Last night two of them apologised for their actions. "Messrs Roelof Malherbe and Schalk van der Merwe... participated in the making of the film, but remind their critics that they were and are students," said a statement released by their lawyer. They are currently suspended. The statement denied the liquid was urine, and said the five cleaners took part voluntarily and that they "enjoyed it". The other two students, Danie Grobler and Johnny Roberts, left the 104-year-old university in December.

The cleaners held a press conference yesterday but under legal guidance from their trade union said little. "It has affected us badly. We trusted these students and they betrayed us," one said. Lesley Mokgoro, a lawyer for the cleaners, said they had been tricked into featuring in the film. They have been offered counselling and have not ruled out legal action. Although the video was made last September in response to the college's new plans for integration, it only emerged this week.

Classes resumed yesterday but a walk around the campus revealed tensions were still high. As politicians queued up to condemn, the university said it had officially reported the matter to the Director of Public Prosecutions and supplied a copy of the video.

At Reitz, students had barricaded the main building with chairs to protect it from attack. Black students said the area around the block had always been an unofficial no-go zone. In the hostel, a student spokesman, Stanley Nicholson, 21, defended the four. "It was taken out of context and was meant to be fun. The workers knew what was happening and the liquid was not urine. It's been edited to look really bad and now it's being used by the blacks to attack us." Asked whether it was acceptable behaviour, he said: "I'm not going to criticise these students because I know them, they are my friends."

However a post-graduate student Mariette Bezuidenhout, 30, was prepared to condemn them. "They make people think all Afrikaners are like them, they make us look gat," which loosely translates as common. "It doesn't look good on students or the university. But the issue of forcing integration is a serious issue – they should not be forcing blacks to live with whites, or whites with blacks if they don't want to," she added.

Despite the chancellor's efforts to enforce integration, a glimpse around campus showed that the races still stuck to themselves. Black men played football together, white students rugby and females walked with their own kind.
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