Sayed Pervez Kambaksh’s sentence has generated much controversy

In Kabul’s grim and crowded central prison, a 23-year-old student from northern Afghanistan spends each day wondering if and when he will be put to death.

Sayed Pervez Kambaksh was sentenced in January, in five minutes, at a local court in Mazar-e-Sharif, with no legal representation to defend charges of blasphemy after reports he had downloaded from the internet un-Islamic material on women’s rights.

“I don’t know what will happen to me,” he said from the prison office where we were allowed half an hour to interview him.

“My trial was unfair from the beginning. From day one, they have been treating me very harshly as a criminal, not a suspect, and I don’t know who has done this to me.

“My case has been politicised – my lawyer has been threatened. I have lost nine months of my life now in four prisons,” he said.

‘Deviated from religion’