A 41-year-old Afghan citizen who faces execution over his 1990 conversion from Islam to Christianity is getting support from the Seventh-day Adventist Church as well as leaders worldwide.

Global attention was drawn these days to the case of Abdul Rahman, who once worked for a Christian relief agency and who lived for several years in Germany. Now living in his native Afghanistan, Rahman was reported to Islamic authorities in the course of a custody dispute involving his ex-wife and children. Under Islamic Shari'a law, which is part of the Afghan legal system, a Muslim who rejects the religion and does not return can be put to death.

"For those who defend religious freedom, what is happening in Afghanistan is not a surprise," says Dr. John Graz, director of Public Affairs and Religious Liberty for the Seventh-day Adventist Church. "There are several countries in the world that follow similar practices and the world seems to ignore that. Leaders of democratic countries must know what happens in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Sudan when a Muslim wants to change [their] religion."

United Nations Liaison director for the Adventist Church Dr. Jonathan Gallagher, adds: "I am currently in Geneva at [a meeting of] the U.N. Commission for Human Rights (UNCHR), and this is very much an issue here. This case has hit the headlines, since it exemplifies the major threat posed to the free exercise of religion in under certain regimes--not just Afghanistan. It is tragic that in a country that has seen so much involvement from the world community in developing open and free government that a citizen's life is under threat simply for exercising his constitutional right to practice his religion of choice."

Several national leaders including the president of the United States of America have expressed concern over the Rahman case, and media reports indicate that such appeals may be having a positive result. According to the Deutsche Welle network in Germany, Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai has assured both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper that Rahman would not face the death penalty.

Harper told reporters in Ottawa that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has assured Canada about the case: "I phoned President Karzai personally to express our concern. He conveyed to me that we don't have to worry about any such eventual outcome."

Meanwhile the Afghan government faced heavy international pressure to reconsider the charges against an Afghan man who faces a possible death sentence for converting from Islam to Christianity - and reports emerged that the man might be freed soon.

A government official said March 24 that Rahman may be freed within the next few days. The news service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) said government officials were meeting March 25 to discuss the case.

Rahman had "committed the greatest sin"' by converting to Christianity and deserved to be killed, cleric Abdul Raoulf said in a Friday sermon March 24 at Herati Mosque.

Another cleric, Ayatullah Asife Muhseni, told a gathering of preachers and intellectuals at a Kabul hotel that the Afghan president had no right to overturn the punishment of an apostate.