Aid Worker Arrested for Being Christian Is Released From Afghanistan Prison
ICC Note:
“An Afghan Red Cross worker who was arrested last spring for converting to Christianity has been released from an Afghanistan prison,” Fox News reports.
By Diane Macedo
2/23/2011 Afghanistan (Fox News) – An Afghan Red Cross worker who was arrested last spring for converting to Christianity has been released from an Afghanistan prison.
The worker, Said Musa, 46, was released from prison last week “after aggressive international diplomacy engaged Afghanistan’s government,” International Christian Concern, an organization that worked directly with his case, said in a written statement Thursday.
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According to ICC, Musa wrote in a Feb. 13 letter that U.S. and Italian Embassies offered him asylum but that Afghan officials subsequently told him that he would only be released if he wrote a statement declaring that he regretted his conversion to Christianity.
“I refused their demands,” he wrote.
Even so, on Feb. 21 an official from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul told the organization Musa was released and safely out of the country.
“We cannot be more thrilled about Said Musa’s release. It has been encouraging to see the international community, including churches, reporters and government officials in Europe and North America, work together for the common goal of freeing Said,” Aidan Clay, ICC’s regional manager for the Middle East, said in the statement. “Many sleepless nights, prayers and tears have paid off.”
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“While the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) welcomes Said Musa’s release, the fact that he was in jail demonstrates the serious deficiencies in the Afghan legal system,” USCIRF chair Leonard Leo told FoxNews.com. “The U.S. government and international community need to seriously engage the Karzai government about protecting the religious freedoms of all Afghanis.”
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