A tribunal has turned down the appeal from Abdullah...

A tribunal has turned down the appeal from Abdullah Shah a notorious Afghan commander sentenced to death for killing dozens of people, including three of his wives and five of his children. He was found guilty despite a United Nations investigator expressing reservations about his trial.
President Hamid Karzai will make the final decision about the death sentence, which has the support of Afghanistan's Chief Justice and the Head of the Supreme Court, Fazl Hadi Shinwari.
Pakistani lawyer Asma Jahangir, the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, attended the trial last month. She said she had strong reservations about the way it was conducted and called for a halt to the death penalty in Afghanistan until international standards for imposing capital punishment could be met.
If the sentence is carried out, Shah's would be the first officially sanctioned execution in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban regime one year ago.