When Richard Benkin enters his synagogue Monday to observe the holiest and most solemn day on the Jewish calendar, he will plead for God's mercy on behalf of a friend he has never met.

Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, a Bangladeshi Muslim journalist who invited Benkin to write about Israel from a Jewish point of view, will be tried this month on charges of spying for the Jewish state. The crime is punishable by death in predominantly Muslim Bangladesh...

... For more than three years, Benkin's friendship with Choudhury has become a brotherly bond. It started when Choudhury, the editor of an English-language weekly newspaper in Bangladesh, e-mailed Benkin to help him foster a conversation in his country about Israel.

"In the Muslim world there is a tremendous misconception spread by the terrorists and the religious in the mosques," Choudhury said in a telephone interview. "They are told that Christians and Jews are the enemies of Islam. Whenever they are referring to that issue, they are also waving their fingers to Israel as an extremist country persecuting the Muslims."With Choudhury's support, Benkin wrote the first pro-Zionist articles published in Bangladesh. Choudhury in turn condemned Muslim extremism in the Israeli media.

"It was very clear to both of us that there was something genuine here," Benkin said. "This was an incredible opportunity to participate in something special. The fact that this man was going to stand up and do something like that, in what turned out to be a very dangerous environment, only made me admire and love him even more."

The exchange abruptly ended in November 2003. Choudhury was arrested at Dhaka-Zia International Airport before boarding a flight to Israel, where he was scheduled to deliver a lecture on Muslim-Jewish relations. After several months behind bars, he was charged with sedition, a capital offense in Bangladesh...