It had previously been reported within these pages that journalist and television presenter Ahmed Zalami had caused some amount of controversy in his native Afghanistan with his dissemination of a translation of the Koran into Dari; Dari being the native Afghan dialect of the Farsi (Persian) language.

Now, an Afghan court has sentenced both Ahmed Zalami as well as his project associate Mullah Quari Mushtaq to 20 years in jail for the translation; the court also imposed a 5 year suspended sentence on Mohammad Ateef Noori whose company printed said translation. Although escaping incarceration, Noori will now be placed under police surveillance.

The reasons stated for their sentences were that the translation “reflected errors” and “mistaken concepts” and that Zalami and Mushtaq had failed to print an Arabic original of the Koran alongside the translated version as dictated by Islamic Law. The translation itself was actually done in the United States and Zalami and Mushtaq merely helped to bring the collation, printing and distributing of the work to completion, but this link with the United States caused further trouble for the pair because it led to the Afghan Religious Affairs Minister to claim that the errors contained within the translation were a ‘Zionist Plot’.

An appeal for intervention is being made to the Afghan President Mohamed Karzai by international freedom of expression organisations…we will keep readers posted on any new developments.