An Afghan soldier who murdered three Australian troops has lost his final appeal against the death penalty.
The fate of the remorseless killer, Sgt Hekmatullah, now rests in the hands of the families of those he killed and the Afghanistan's recently-elected president.
The secret judgment against Hekmatullah, which the country's Supreme Court has consistently refused to discuss, was confirmed by diplomatic and prison sources in Kabul and also by the killer himself during a jailhouse interview this month as part of a Four Corners investigation into the incident.
Hekmatullah was convicted and sentenced to death, which in Afghanistan is usually by hanging, of the murders of Lance Corporal 'Rick' Milosevic, Sapper James Martin and Private Robbie Poate as they were relaxing on a remote patrol base in Uruzgan province in late August 2012.
2 other Diggers were wounded.
The case has recently been examined in a coronial inquest in Brisbane, the 1st of its type involving the death of the 41 Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan.
Evidence was heard about a failure to communicate a heightened risk of insider attacks, in which local forces turn their weapons against foreign mentors, to the slain men's platoon.
The finding of the inquest will be handed down at a later date.
The killer, Hekmatullah, evaded attempts to be captured after the shooting, fleeing the base and ultimately being secreted by the Taliban across the border to Pakistan. He was arrested in February 2013 and after months of interrogation, during which he said he was blindfolded and could hear English-speaking voices while being tortured, he confessed to the murders.
In December last year, he was sentenced to death, a verdict upheld later in an appeal court.
His final chance of overturning or having the sentence commuted to a lengthy prison term, was refused by the Supreme Court in a hearing some months ago.
He is imprisoned in the high-security wing of Kabul's Pul-e Charkhi jail, sharing a block with former Australian soldier, Robert Langdon, who was sentenced to 20-years jail for murdering an Afghan colleague while working as a private security guard.
Langdon, like Hekmatullah, had been sentenced to death but under a provision under Afghan law, paid his victim's family US$100,000 to offer forgiveness, which allowed the Supreme Court to commute the sentence to a prison term.
Hekmatullah has requested the families forgive him but has also vowed to kill again, saying he was inspired to kill after watching a Taliban propaganda video that showed foreign soldiers desecrating the Koran.
The relatives of Hekmatullah's victims, however, appear uninterested in any mercy.
"He showed absolutely no mercy to our boys," Pte Poate's father, Hugh told Four Corners.
"He killed them in the prime of their lives. They had done nothing to him other than befriend him and he turned around and just killed them in premeditated cold-blooded murder, so I'm rather hoping that the sentence will be carried out."
All decisions on the enforcement of the death penalty are made by Afghanistan's president, Ashraf Ghani.
Diplomats in Kabul had believed Mr Ghani is unlikely to order the execution of any of the prisoners on death row but that view has softened in recent weeks.
Mr Ghani, to the surprise and disappointment of many of his western backers, did not intervene after his predecessor, Hamid Karzai, signed off on his last day in office on the execution of 5 men convicted of gang rape and another, of unrelated kidnapping charges.
All 6 men were hanged on October 8.
Source: The News, October 27, 2014
