Back in Kabul, Rahman eventually contacted his family. In recent months, he tried repeatedly to regain custody of his daughters, now 13 and 14 years of age.

“The father finally went to the police in order to stop Abdul from contacting him, by telling them that Abdul converted to Christianity,” a Kabul source said. He was promptly taken into custody, interrogated and sent to jail to await trial.

Although Rahman is allowed to have a defense lawyer, he has declined, insisting he can defend himself. But according to Christian sources in Kabul, the convert suffers from recurring mental instability, which could alter the Islamic court’s handling of his case.

Rahman is reportedly incarcerated with 50 other prisoners in a cell designed for 15 in Kabul’s Central Prison, where members of the press have been denied access to him. Since he is estranged from his family, and prisoners are traditionally dependent upon food rations supplied by their families, it is unclear whether he is being fed regularly.

Labeled a ‘Cancer’

If Rahman is found guilty of apostasy and given the death penalty, as demanded by prosecutor Abdul Wasi, Afghan law permits him two final appeals – first to the provincial court, and then the Supreme Court.

Calling Rahman a “traitor to Islam,” Wasi told the court he was “like a cancer inside Afghanistan.”

Wasi told the Associated Press (AP) that when he offered to drop all the charges against Rahman if he returned to Islam, the defendant refused. “He said he was a Christian and would always remain one,” Wasi said.

“We are Muslims, and becoming a Christian is against our laws,” the prosecutor concluded. “He must get the death penalty.”

Rahman is being tried by Judge Ansarullah Mawlavizada, who has said he would issue a verdict on the case within two months.

“We are not against any particular religion in the world,” the judge told the AP on March 19. “But in Afghanistan, this sort of thing is against the law. It is an attack on Islam.”

On March 20, however, Judge Mawlavizada told the British Broadcasting Corporation that Rahman’s mental state would be considered first, “before he was dealt with under sharia [Islamic] law.”

President Hamid Karzai’s office has said the president will not intervene in the case. But today a religious adviser to Karzai announced that Rahman would be given psychological tests.

“Doctors must examine him,” Moayuddin Baluch told the AP. “If he is mentally unfit, definitely Islam has no claim to punish him. He must be forgiven. The case must be dropped.”

Although the Afghan government is clearly anxious to resolve Rahman’s case in order to satisfy international criticisms, the state-sponsored Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission has reportedly called for Rahman to be punished, insisting that he had “clearly violated Islamic law.”