He is a Red Cross worker who lost a leg to a land mine several years back. Not exactly the most threatening fellow in the country, by a long shot.
Said Musa, 45, has been held for eight months in a Kabul prison were he claims he has been tortured and sexually abused by inmates and guards.
Mr Musa, who lost his left leg in a landmine explosion in the 1990s, has worked for the Red Cross for 15 years and helps to treat fellow amputees.
He was arrested in May last year as he attempted to seek asylum at the German embassy following a crackdown on Christians within Afghanistan.
He claims he was visited by a judge who told him he would be hanged within days unless he converted back to Islam.
A TV station outed Musa and other Christians in Afghanistan. Now they face persecution and death at the hands of the government we’re “propping up,” to borrow a phrase. Musa isn’t the first and won’t be the last. About five years ago, Abdul Rahman was caught out as a convert to Christianity and had to flee to Italy. In 2009, teenager Zaman Mohammadi converted to Christianity, and ended up having to seek asylum in the UK. Google “Christian Afghanistan asylum” and you’ll run into other similar cases. A few common threads link all of them. They converted from Islam to Christianity, the government prosecuted and threatened to kill them, and the people backed the government to the hilt. So the converts had to flee Afghanistan.
So…it’s no mere coincidence that the Egyptian Copts fear what will happen to them in a post-Mubarak Egypt.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member