A missile strike in Pakistan earlier this week is believed to have killed Abu Laith al-Libbi, who is believed responsible for planning some suicide bombing attacks in Afghanistan.

From RSF.org:

A demonstration was held today in Kabul in support of Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, while the senate issued a statement disagreeing with the statement issued yesterday by the senate president supporting Kambakhsh’s death sentence.

This time of year in Vietnam is Tet, the lunar new year.

Normally a time of celebration, the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army used the event in 1968 -- about three years after the Vietnam War really began to ramp up -- to launch simultaneous attacks throughout South Vietnam.

As a military offensive, it failed. As a psychological and political tactic to weaken U.S. support for the Vietnam War, it worked spectacularly well.

I went to a Canadian Journalism Foundation event tonight featuring Pamela Wallin talking about the Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan report.

Here's a part of the report that raises questions for me:

Paddy Ashdown, by all accounts, did a good job as administrator of Bosnia-Herzogovina from 2002 to 2005.

So why didn't Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai want him to take on a similar task in Afghanistan?

From a Jan. 25 Reuters story about Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, sentenced to death on Jan. 22 for blasphemy:

"We're concerned about this sentence that was handed down to a reporter for basically practicing his profession and we wouldn't want to see any actions taken that would limit his or anyone else's freedom of the press or freedom of expression," U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters.

"I understand there's an appeal process that is under way and certainly we're going to be looking at that very carefully, and hopefully there will be a different outcome to this than the one that's presently there," Casey added.

The United Nations on Thursday called on Afghanistan to review the Kambakhsh's case, which has also been taken up by the worldwide media watchdog Reporters without Borders.

RSF had the following in a Jan. 25 news release:

The French foreign ministry has expressed outrage at the verdict. “France stresses that it is completely opposed to the death penalty,” the ministry said. “Freedom of expression must be guaranteed, respecting the principles and values enshrined in the Afghan constitution.”

The president of the European parliament called on the Afghan authorities on 18 January to release Kambakhsh.

Here's a Jan. 24 Beeb story on the case:

The UN mission (in Afghanistan) said the reporter, Perwiz Kambakhsh, did not have legal representation - which was a possible misuse of the judicial process.

It has called for a review of Kambaksh's conviction for distributing an article that criticised Islam.

He was arrested in 2007 after downloading material relating to the role of women in Islamic societies.

Warnings

The UN said that the court in the northern province of Balkh handled the case in a closed session on Tuesday and that 23-year-old Kambakhsh had no representation.

This, and warnings to journalists who may support him, "point to possible misuse of the judicial process", the mission said in a statement.

"We urge a proper and complete review of this case as it goes through the appeals process," it said.

Germany has also expressed its dismay. From the Daily Times of Pakistan:

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he would raise objections with Kabul to an Afghan court’s sentencing of a young reporter accused of blasphemy to death, in an interview broadcast Sunday.

“You can be sure that I will protest against this type of behaviour to the Afghan government, just as I have in previous cases,” Steinmeier told public radio station Deutschlandfunk.

Here's where you can find DFAIT's news releases. Wake me when you see something about this case.

The Washington Post had this in a Jan. 25 story:

According to Afghan law, defense lawyers may appeal the lower court's decision. Ibrahimi (Kambaksh's older brother, also a journalist), who has consulted with mullahs, said he was told that his brother could have been released after three days if he had apologized.

Said Tayeb Jawad, the Afghan ambassador to the United States, confirmed that Kambakhsh has the right to appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. "This is just a recommendation by the council of clerics," Jawad said of the sentence, adding that he has taken the matter up with the foreign affairs minister. "It does not have binding power."

(Search engine note: I've also seen his name spelled "Sayad Parwez Kambaksh" and the surname spelled "Kaambakhsh")

Four lawyers in a Canadian Islamic Congress action against Maclean's magazine respond to Ezra Levant.

Ezra Levant holds forth on his encounter with an Alberta Human Rights Commission case officer over the complaint lodged against him over his decision to republish the Mohammad cartoons in the now-defunct Western Standard.

If you've been paying attention, this isn't a particularly newsworthy story, but the Mother Jones cover story on the environmental cost of China's attempt to live the American Dream is a sobering wrap-up of what that country is paying -- not to mention the planet as a whole.