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260508 - A young Afghanistani journalist who was sentenced to death for downloading an article on women’s rights from an Iranian website is hopeful to leave the prison soon, London’s Independent reports from Kabul.

Pervez Kambakhsh, 24, was arrested in October 2007 in Balkh province after the Persian material he downloaded was deemed to be "blasphemous" and offensive to Islam. He had confessed to questioning Islam’s treatment of women before a primary court in Balkh and was sentenced to death. Last week in Kabul, however, Kambakhsh denied the charges claiming that he had to confess to something he had never done because he was being tortured.

"I really did not believe that I would survive for this long, I thought that they would make sure I would disappear, I would be killed. I was abused and beaten after being arrested," he said yesterday to The Independent. "But now I think they will overturn this wrong verdict and I can get out of this place and start again."

Kambakhsh’s arrest and the Afghan Senate’s approval of the death verdict caused an international uproar. The Senate passed a motion proposed by an MP (Sibqatullah Mojaddedi) confirming the death sentence on 30 January 2008. Afghan senators had also condemned the international community for defending Kambakhsh and urged President Karzai to ignore outside un-Islamic pressure. But numerous international organisations with Reporters Without Borders in the lead called on Hamid Karzai to intervene and quash the death sentence. On 31 January The Independent launched an online petition urging the UK Foreign Office to put all possible pressure on the Afghan government to prevent the execution of Sayyed Pervez Kambakhsh, and according to the newspapers’ yesterday report, it has attracted more than 100,000 signatures so far. The International Federation of Journalists protested Kambakhsh’s trial behind the closed doors without a defence lawyer.

The Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWRP) believes that Kambakhsh’s arrest is related with his journalist brother’s activities. Pervez’s brother, Sayyed Yaqub Ibrahimi, had published a few stories outlining abuses by some powerful warlords in northern provinces of the country.

The trial is amongst the most high-profile court proceedings of Afghanistan as the fate of the young journalist had been discussed during the visits of the British Foreign Secretary and the US Secretary of State to Afghanistan.

According to The Independent, Hamid Karzai has privately assured Kambakhsh’s campaign team the journalist will be free. "Senior government figures have also indicated that they believe his sentence, by a court in Mazar-e-Sharif, was based on a mistaken interpretation of the country's constitutional law".

Pervez Kambakhsh whose study in journalism faculty was interrupted by his ordeal hopes to tell the truth about Afghan prisons in a book, if he gets out alive.

Meanwhile, as Alisa Tang of AP reports from Kabul, Pervez is trying "to keep up his spirits in his lonely cell by singing and reciting Persian poetry. He says he is healthy and well-treated and allowed outside his room for one hour of sunshine each day. For part of the day, enough light enters his room for him to read books about Afghan and world history."