These are OUR guys????
Afghan Judge Vows to Resist Pressure in Case of Convert
Published: March 23, 2006
KABUL, Afghanistan, March 23 — Despite growing international concern, the judge presiding over the prosecution of an Afghan man facing the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity said today that international pressure would not affect his rulings in the case.
Ansarullah Mawlavi Zada, the head of the public security tribunal here in the Afghan capital, said he had received no international pressure to date, but vowed to resist it.
"There is no direct pressure on our court so far, but if it happens we will consider it as an interference," said Mr. Zada. He added that he expects to rule in the case in the next several days.
In Washington, meanwhile, the Bush administration continued to express its dismay and to increase the pressure on Kabul. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke this morning with President Hamid Karzai and discussed the affair "in the strongest possible terms," said the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack.
"She called specifically on this topic," Mr. McCormack said. "And she urged President Karzai's government to seek a favorable resolution to this case the earliest possible moment." Mr. McCormack said Ms. Rice also told Afghanistan's Foreign Minister, Abdullah Abdullah, in a 15-minute meeting in Washington today that she was deeply troubled by the case, and that the prosecution was "contrary to universal democratic values," which include freedom of religion. Ms. Rice said that the United States fought for those values in Afghanistan, and that the case was contrary to the Afghan constitution, Mr. McCormack said.
The same message came today from the White House, where President Bush's chief spokesman, Scott McClellan, said the Afghan case "clearly violates the universal freedoms that democracies around the world hold dear. And we are watching it very closely."
On Wednesday, President Bush issued a statement that the United States expected Afghan officials to "honor the universal principle of freedom" in the case. Germany, Italy and other countries that have deployed troops in Afghanistan have also issued statements of concern.
Afghan prosecutors have requested the death penalty for the 41-year-old convert, Abdul Rahman. Mr. Rahman told a preliminary hearing in Afghanistan last week that he converted to Christianity about 15 years ago while working with a Christian aid group helping refugees. When he recently sought custody of his children from his parents, family members reported his conversion.
Prosecutors have described Mr. Rahman as a "microbe" and said conversion is illegal under Islamic law. Conservative Afghan religious leaders dominate the country's courts and prosecutorial offices, but Afghanistan's American-backed constitution guarantees freedom of religion.
The case illustrates the continued tensions between President Karzai, an American-backed religious moderate, and religious hardliners who dominate the country's courts. Over the last several years conservative judges have threatened to close Afghan television stations that aired material they deemed indecent and charged journalists with publishing material they declared blasphemous.
In the past, President Karzai has defused clashes with conservative judges by failing to implement their rulings or striking closed-door compromises with them. Mr. Rahman's case has attracted far more attention than others and sparked vocal complaints from American Christian groups.
Today, an aide to Mr. Karzai said that the case would be decided by the Afghan court court system. Mawlavi Muhaiuddin Baloch, Mr. Karzai's advisor on religious affairs, said the case belonged in court and that Afghanistan's judiciary was independent.
In the United States this week, Christian talk shows and advocacy groups rallied their supporters, who flooded the White House and the Afghanistan Embassy with complaints.
The embassy released a statement Wednesday saying that it was "too early" to draw conclusions, and that a judge was now "evaluating questions raised about the mental fitness of Mr. Rahman." The embassy said the results of that evaluation "may end the proceedings."
President Bush, in a visit to Wheeling, W.Va., on Wednesday was asked about the case. He responded: "I'm troubled when I hear — deeply troubled when I hear that a person who has converted away from Islam may be held to account. That's not the universal application of the values that I talked about."
On conservative blogs, a plan for a rally outside the Afghan Embassy in Washington were discussed. While some bloggers expressed satisfaction that the issue was gaining wider attention and drawing a response from the Bush administration, others were exasperated that a regime supported by the United States was considering such a prosecution.
At the State Department briefing today, Mr. McCormack denied that the administration had been slow to respond to the Rahman case. As soon as we learned about it, "we stated our concerns immediately with the foreign minister," he said. "After our initial conversation with the Afghan government we thought it was important that we spoke in the
strongest possible terms in public on this issue."
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a bipartisan government group that works closely with the State Department, has previously warned that the Afghan Constitution does not adequately protect religious freedoms, said Tad Stahnke, the commission's deputy director for policy.
Officials from Germany, Italy and Canada, which all have troops serving in Afghanistan, have voiced their concerns to Mr. Karzai's government. The Italian foreign minister and deputy prime minister, Gianfranco Fini, said Tuesday that he had received assurance that Mr. Rahman would not be executed, but he did not elaborate.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, based in Washington, called for Mr. Rahman's release, saying that the Koran supported religious freedom and that Islam was never compulsory. CAIR said its position was endorsed by the Fiqh Council of North America, a committee of Islamic legal scholars.
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