Afghan Christian Convert Seeks Asylum – Arrives in Italy ¶ Updated

Hundreds of people protested in a northern Afghan city following reports that a man who faced a possible death penalty for converting to Christianity would be released, officials said.

Protests in northern Afghanistan.

Many Afghans are not happy with the decision to dismiss the case.

About 700 Muslim clerics and others chanted “Death to Bush” and other anti-Western slogans in Mazar-e-Sharif, officials told The Associated Press.

Clerics have called for protests across Afghanistan against both the government and the West, which had pressured President Hamid Karzai’s administration to drop the case against Abdul Rahman. He was released today due to “mental illness”.  

KABUL (BBC News) March 28 — An Afghan man who could have faced the death penalty for converting to Christianity has been freed from jail. Abdul Rahman, a Christian for 16 years, was charged with rejecting Islam but his case was dismissed because of insufficient evidence, officials said.

The BBC’s Sanjoy Majumder in Kabul says Mr Rahman was released from Kabul’s main high security Pul-e-Charki prison after officials decided he was mentally unfit to stand trial.

Mr Rahman is currently with officials from the justice ministry, Afghanistan’s deputy attorney general Eshaq Aloko said.

United Nations officials are meeting in Kabul to discuss Mr Rahman’s plea for asylum in another country. UN spokesman Adrian Edwards said the organisation was working with the Afghan government to solve the asylum issue.

The Afghan constitution enshrines personal freedom and recognises the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But it also says the country’s laws are based on Islamic Sharia law and there is an explicit article which says no one has the right to contravene Islam. The constitution is deliberately ambiguous because it attempted to address Western concerns over democracy as well as placate domestic hardliners who favour an Islamic state.

Under Afghanistan’s Sharia legal system Abdul Rahman could have faced execution if he had refused to renounce Christianity. Mr Rahman has lived outside Afghanistan for 16 years and is believed to have converted to Christianity during a stay in Germany.

KABUL (ABC/AP) Mar 28, 2006 — An Afghan man who had faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity quickly vanished today after he was released from prison, apparently out of fear for his life with Muslim clerics still demanding his death.

Italy’s Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini said he would ask his government to grant Abdul Rahman asylum. Fini was among the first to speak out on the man’s behalf.