KABUL, Afghanistan — An Australian security contractor working for an American company has been sentenced to death by an Afghan court for murdering a colleague and then trying to cover up the crime by staging a Taliban ambush.
It is the first time a foreigner working with the NATO coalition has been sentenced to death in Afghanistan.
The contractor, Robert Langdon, a 38-year-old who worked for a security company called Four Horsemen International, was convicted of murder last October and sentenced to death, but the authorities kept quiet about the case.
It became public on Wednesday after an appeals court upheld the sentence and, in response, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia said his government would ask for clemency. An Australian Foreign Ministry statement said the country would make a “high level” and “vigorous” lobbying effort to at least commute the death sentence, but a spokesman for the Afghan Foreign Ministry, Zahir Faqiri, said that “so far we have not received any official protest from the government of Australia.”
The appeals court judge, Abdul Salam Qazizada, said the cold-blooded nature of the attack and its cover-up justified the sentence.
He said that the victim, who used the single name Karim, was the team leader of a group of Afghan security guards working for Mr. Langdon, who was in charge of escorting a coalition supply convoy from Kabul to Ghazni, 85 miles southeast, in May 2009.
The convoy was delayed while passing through Wardak Province, where the Taliban are active, and Mr. Karim objected that they should not continue after dark. The two men quarreled. Mr. Karim told Mr. Langdon “that the enemy will use the dark against us and will attack us,” the judge said.
“Robert Langdon opened the door of the car where Karim was sitting and shot him in the head,” Judge Qazizada said.
Mr. Langdon had claimed that the victim had reached for a pistol.
“He reached across, and I am ex-military, so it was like bang-bang-bang-bang,” Mr. Langdon testified. “I didn’t have time to think.” Mr. Langdon shot him four times in the head and body.
The judge said he believed the testimony of other witnesses that Mr. Karim was unarmed at the time. In an effort to cover up the crime, the judge said, Mr. Langdon detonated a hand grenade on the body “and ordered his men to fire in the air to fake a Taliban firefight.”
A Nepalese employee on the convoy reported the shooting to Afghan authorities after the convoy’s return to Kabul. Mr. Langdon had immediately gone to his bank and withdrawn all his money and was about to board a flight for Dubai when Afghan police officers arrested him, the judge said.
“I’m convinced that he’s a murderer,” Judge Qazizada said. “We gave him what he deserved.”
Mr. Langdon had pleaded not guilty on grounds of diminished capacity.
Under Afghan law, if the family of the victim agrees, the family of a murderer can pay compensation, known as blood money, to avert the death penalty, though the killer would normally still remain in prison. On Wednesday, Judge Qazizada said it was too early to consider any such settlement.
But a newspaper, The Australian, reported that lawyers for Mr. Langdon’s family were negotiating with Mr. Karim’s family.
Afghanistan’s Supreme Court will review the appeals court’s decision. If it is upheld, the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, can consider clemency.
Australia has 1,500 troops as part of the American-led NATO coalition here. It has no death penalty and normally strongly opposes capital punishment for its citizens abroad.
Sign in to RecommendNext Article in World (14 of 26) » A version of this article appeared in print on January 28, 2010, on page A10 of the New York edition.
Source:nytimes.com/
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