KABUL, March 29: An Afghan Christian who faced the death penalty for converting from Islam arrived in Italy from Kabul on Wednesday, Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi announced.
Mr Berlusconi told a news conference in Rome that Abdul Rahman ‘is already in Italy, he has requested political asylum and is currently under the care of the interior ministry’.
The 41-year-old’s case had drawn widespread international attention and was seen as a key test for Afghanistan’s fledgling democracy, but Afghan parliamentarians have denounced Western interference in the case.
“The decision has been taken. The matter has been resolved,” Labour Minister Roberto Maroni said in Rome, announcing the asylum offer.
Abdul Rahman was arrested about two weeks ago under Shariat law that dictates he should be sentenced to death unless he reverts to Islam. The Afghan constitution is partly based on the Islamic code.
Abdul Rahman was freed from jail in secret late on Monday and kept under tight security at an undisclosed location after calls for him to be put to death.
His release came after the supreme court suspended its case against him on Sunday, saying it had doubts about Rahman’s mental health after testimony from his relatives that he was ‘mad’.
The case against Rahman provoked an international outcry, with Kabul’s Western allies putting unprecedented pressure on the government to honour freedom of religion.
President Hamid Karzai held several meetings at the weekend to try to find a way to resolve a ‘serious crisis” for the government.
But Afghanistan’s parliament denounced the interference in a heated debate and said Abdul Rahman should not be allowed to escape.
The supreme court’s weekend decision to release Rahman from trial was ‘contrary to the laws in place in Afghanistan’, said a summary of the debate read out by speaker Yunus Qanooni and approved by MPs.
The Western interference is ‘very obvious’, said MP Burhanuddin Rabanni, who served as president between 1992 and 1996. “It is undermining the judiciary in the public view.”
A prominent MP and a well-known commander in the anti-Soviet resistance in the 1980s, Abdul Rasoul Sayyaf, charged that the case was a plot to create ‘a rift between the West and Afghanistan’.
Abdul Rahman converted in Pakistan 16 years ago and lived in Europe, including Germany, for some time before returning to Afghanistan three years ago.
The premier of Germany’s Saarland state, Peter Mueller, had also offered him asylum, telling the German daily Die Welt he would be ‘warmly welcome’.
The case is being seen as a test of how far Afghanistan has moved on from the 1996-2001 rule of the Taliban, who were removed in a US-led invasion after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks.—AFP
