The Afghanistan Independent Journalists Association said it would complain to President Hamid Karzai about the sentencing of editor Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, who has been in jail since his arrest two weeks ago.

“This trial was against the law, the arrest was against the law since the beginning,” the association’s president, Rahimullah Samander, told AFP.

“We told the court he didn’t make any mistake. He wrote what he had the right to write according to Afghan law and press freedom and freedom of expression,” he said.

Nasab, editor of the monthly magazine Haqoq-e-Zan (Women’s Rights), was arrested after complaints about his articles, including one, which questioned the severity of Islamic punishments for crimes such as adultery.

His arrest was condemned by the world’s top media rights groups.

Nasab’s case was also brought before Afghanistan’s Media Monitoring Commission, which stripped him of the title of chief editor of the magazine but recommended the blasphemy charges be dropped.

“We will complain to the president because according to Afghan law a person cannot be punished twice, once by the commission and once by the court,” Samander said.