An Afghan tribunal sentenced one of the country's most...

An Afghan tribunal sentenced one of the country's most notorious commanders to death for murdering dozens of people, including three of his wives and five of his children. The court judge said Abdullah Shah could appeal the sentence and President Hamid Karzai's approval for the death sentence was needed. The court also sentenced his alleged accomplice, Mohammad Arif, to prison for 10 years. Both of the accused, who appeared in shackles before an open court, pleaded not guilty and rejected the charges against them. Afghanistan's chief justice and head of the Supreme Court, Fazl Hadi Shinwari, has already demanded Karzai give the death penalty to Shah. If the court's decision is upheld, it would be the first official execution in Afghanistan since the fall of the hard-line Islamic Taliban regime late in 2001."We don't accept the decision. We will appeal against the court's verdict," Shah told the court judge. When Afghanistan was in the grip of civil war in the 1990s, Shah served as a commander with another wanted warlord Zardad from the Hezb-i-Islami faction led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, officials said. According to Shinwari, Shah hails from Paghman, a village outside Kabul city. He earned the title "Zardad's Dog" for biting and killing travellers who refused to pay duties to Zardad, who ruled the town of Sarobi east of Kabul in the 1990s. Shah's fourth wife is among several petitioners against her 43-year-old husband, court officials said. "He is famous as 'Zardad's Dog' and we have witnesses and petitions from a number of people against him. He himself has confessed to having killed his family members and he should be punished severely," Shinwari said in a recent interview. "Islamic laws propose execution and that is what I am demanding is done." The Taliban attracted stern international criticism for applying harsh Islamic punishment, including executing murderers, during its five years in power. Many executions were carried out in public. The Taliban also chopped off the hands of thieves, lashed people caught taking drugs and drinking alcohol and stoned or lashed adulterers. The punishments had the effect of reducing crime during Taliban rule.