KABUL (AFP) ? The Afghan government has executed two Taliban insurgents for a coordinated gun and suicide attack on a bank which left 38 people dead, it said on Monday.
Zar Ajam, whom the Afghans identified as Pakistani, and an Afghan named Mutihullah were sentenced to death this month for their part in the attack on a branch of Kabul Bank in Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan, in February.
President Hamid Karzai personally gave the go-ahead for their sentences to be carried out, a statement from the Afghan intelligence service said.
"They were executed at 11:00 am (0630 GMT) today and a third accomplice in the case was sentenced to 20 years in prison," said the statement, without specifying the method used.
The brazen bank raid, which targeted security officials collecting their salaries, caused outrage among many in Afghanistan.
After the killings, local television repeatedly screened closed-circuit television footage from inside the bank showing a man dressed in police uniform repeatedly shooting unarmed civilians.
In an apparent confessional video, Ajam said he "enjoyed" killing people in the bank, believing they were all foreigners.
The Afghan government said that Ajam's body will be handed over to the Pakistani embassy in Kabul as soon as tomorrow while the body of the second insurgent, Mutihullah, was given to his family in Jalalabad.
However, Pakistan's ambassador to Afghanistan Mohammad Sadiq disputed that Ajam was from his nation.
"We are not aware if he was Pakistani. We never had access to him to ascertain his nationality, nor did anybody (relatives) approach us," Sadiq told AFP by telephone during a visit to Islamabad.
Sadiq's comments were rebutted by a spokesman for Afghanisatan's intelligence agency, Lutfullah Mashal, who insisted that Ajam was a Pakistani national.
"We are 100 percent certain that he is Pakistani, we have his ID... we showed the ID to officials of the Pakistani embassy in Kabul, they also confirmed his nationality," Mashal said.
In a separate incident, local government spokesman Abdul Marouf Rasikh said the Taliban beheaded a shepherd two days ago in the usually peaceful northern province of Badakhshan.
Rasikh said the victim was accused of spying on Taliban.
Taliban militants have been waging a bloody insurgency against Afghan government and NATO forces for almost a decade now.
Afghan forces will start to take responsibility for seven cities and provinces from foreign troops next month, allowing some international forces to start withdrawing.
A full drawdown of NATO-led, US-dominated foreign combat troops is due by the end of 2014.
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