03 October 2004	Sunday	17 Shaban 1425

LONDON, Oct 2: A British court is to try an alleged former Afghan warlord in the first case of its kind since Britain ratified a 1988 convention allowing it to try crimes of torture committed abroad, a legal source said on Saturday.

Zardad Khan, now running a pizza parlour in a London suburb, will face charges of murder, kidnapping, theft and torture in the 1990s when he appears in court on Monday, the source said.

Zardad Khan, a Pakhtun, was in charge of roadblocks preventing access to the Afghan capital during the siege of the city.

From 1992 to 1996 he and his men controlled the town of Sarobi, on the road between Kabul and Jalalabad, near the frontier with Pakistan. He is charged with looting humanitarian convoys and robbing travellers to and from Kabul, then under siege from Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and subject to almost daily rocket attacks.

He is accused of acts of cruelty, in particular against civilians. His trial will open with legal arguments before the first witnesses are called on Oct 11. Several Afghan witnesses will testify by video link from Kabul.

Zardad Khan left Afghanistan in 1996 after the Taliban came to power. He was discovered by a BBC television team in 2000. If found guilty he will serve any sentence in Britain as he could face the death penalty in Afghanistan, and could not therefore be extradited.-AFP