Afghan soldier sentenced to death for killing French soldiers

PanARMENIAN.Net - An Afghan soldier has been sentenced to death for killing five French soldiers in a "green-on-blue" attack in Kapisa province in January, the defense ministry said Tuesday, July 17, AFP reported.

The incident, in which the soldier turned his gun on his French colleagues, prompted France to speed up its planned withdrawal of troops from NATO operations in Afghanistan.

The man, Abdul Sabor, was sentenced to death by hanging in a military court in Pul-i-Chakri prison on Monday, a defense ministry source said.

Four unarmed French soldiers were killed outright and 15 others were wounded as they jogged on their military base on January 20. A fifth French soldier died weeks later from his wounds.

The latest publicly-known execution in Afghanistan was of two men in June 2011 for a suicide attack on a bank in Jalalabad in which 38 people were killed.

In October 2007, Afghanistan announced it had put to death 15 men, one convicted of killing three foreign journalists, in only the second confirmed executions since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.