Italian court jails two Afghans for reporter's 2001 murder

Rome, Nov 29 (IANS/AKI) A court here on Wednesday convicted two Afghans, Mamur and Zar Jan, of the 2001 execution of Italian journalist Maria Grazia Cutuli in Afghanistan and sentenced the pair to 24 years in prison.

The court also ordered each of the men to pay 250,000 euros of damages to Cutuli, to her family and to Rcs Media Group, which owns Corriere della Sera, the paper Cutuli was reporting for at the time of her murder.

Cutuli's killers received their convictions via videolink and are currently serving 16 and 18 year jail terms in Afghanistan for the slaying of Cutuli and three other journalists in a roadside ambush, 90 km from Kabul.

Prosecutors had requested prison terms of 30 years of each of the Jans who shot dead 39-year-old Cutuli with Kalashnikov rifles on the road between Kabul and city of Jalalabad on November 19, 2001.

Julio Fuentes, a reporter with Spanish daily in El Mundo, and two Reuters photoreporters, Australian Harry Burton and Afghan Azizullah Haidari were also killed in the ambush.

Cutuli had been in Afghanistan for a month when she was killed and in the days before her murder had covered the area around Jalalabad and reported on Al-Qaeda hideouts flattened by US bombing raids, according to Corriere della Sera.

--IANS/AKI

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