Reza KHAN
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics: Rape - Robbery
Number of victims: 5
Date of murders: ??? / November 19, 2001
Date of birth: 1975
Victims profile: His wife / Harry Burton, Maria Grazia Cutuli, Azizullah Haidari, and Julio Fuentes (journalists)
Method of murder: Shooting
Location: Sarobi, Afghanistan
Status: Executed by shooting on October 8, 2007
Reza Khan (died October 8, 2007) was charged on August 5, 2004 in Kabul, Afghanistan of murder, rape, and robbery involving four journalists on November 19, 2001. Khan was also accused of cutting off the noses and ears of four Afghan men because of their short beards. Khan was convicted in November 2004 and executed in Afghanistan on October 8, 2007.
The journalists (Harry Burton, Maria Grazia Cutuli, Azizullah Haidari, and Julio Fuentes) were traveling in a convoy from Jalalabad to Kabul when a group of armed men dragged them from their cars and murdered them.
Khan confessed to being one of eleven people who stopped the vehicles and to personally killing one of the foreign men and raping Cutuli; he said they got their orders from Taliban leader Maulawi Latif. Khan also confessed to killing his own wife in Pakistan.
Death penalty for Afghan killer
BBC News
November 20, 2004
An Afghan accused of killing four journalists in 2001 has been sentenced to death by a court in Kabul.
Reza Khan was convicted of robbing and shooting the three foreigners and an Afghan after holding them up on a road east of Kabul in 2001.
He was also found guilty of raping one of them, Italian Maria Grazia Cutuli.
"The crimes are proven and there is no doubt about it," the presiding judge said as he passed sentence on Khan, 29, in a Kabul court.
The journalists were stopped as they travelled from Jalalabad to Kabul in November 2001, just days after the Taleban left the capital.
The other victims were: Australian television cameraman Harry Burton, Afghan photographer Azizullah Haidari of Reuters, and Julio Fuentes of El Mundo.
'Taleban order'
In court on Saturday, Khan denied shooting any of the journalists and also denied the rape, according to Reuters news agency.
He also alleged an order to kill them had come from a top Taleban commander.
Khan, who appeared in court in a traditional woollen hat and had a yellow blanked draped over his shoulders, was given leave to appeal.
On separate charges, Reza Khan was also found guilty of killing one of his wives and holding up a bus and cutting off the noses and ears of four male passengers.
Last month, an Afghan court sentenced to death three men for killing 11 Chinese road workers in June.
