KABUL, 31 October 2005 — Two more men were sentenced to death last week for killing four journalists who entered Afghanistan to cover the 2001 toppling of the Taleban regime, a court official said yesterday.
A third man has already been given the death sentence for the murders of the journalists — an Afghan, an Australian, an Italian and a Spaniard.
A primary court in the capital Kabul sentenced brothers Zar Jan and Abdul Wahid last week but they can still appeal, primary court director Abdul Basit Bakhtiari told AFP.
The sentences have to be approved by higher courts and President Hamid Karzai.
Courts have already handed down the same sentence on a third man, Raza Khan, for the November 2001 murders days after the Taleban were overthrown in an operation led by the United States.
The journalists had crossed into Afghanistan from Pakistan and were traveling by road to Kabul when they were stopped about 90 kilometers from the capital by armed men claiming to be Taleban.
They were killed and their bodies left by the roadside. The only woman in the group, Italian Maria Grazia Cutuli, was “first raped and then killed by the armed men and her ears and nose were cut off,” Bakhtiari said.
The other journalists were Australian cameraman Harry Burton, Afghan photographer Azizullah Haidari and Spaniard Julio Fuentes.
Meanwhile, two US soldiers were charged with allegedly assaulting detainees in Afghanistan, the US-led coalition said yesterday, a week after American troops were accused of burning the bodies of Taleban suspects.
