- KABUL: A government prosecutor says an Afghan court has sentenced a British security contractor to two years in prison after convicting him of paying a $25,000 bribe.
The sentence, handed down Monday, comes amid increasing Western pressure on President Hamid Karzai to crack down on rampant corruption.
Prosecutor Mohammad Ibrahim Ghafory said Wednesday that William Shaw was arrested Jan. 25 along with his translator on charges that they paid $25,000 to two Afghan intelligence service agents to get them to release two armored vehicles that had been confiscated three months before because they weren't properly registered.
Officers became suspicious when drivers appeared to take the cars away. Ghafory said an investigation was quickly launched, but the two men who received the bribe had already disappeared.