Sergeant sentenced to death for killing comrades

A US military jury in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, has sentenced a soldier to death for a grenade and rifle attack on his own comrades during the opening days of the Iraq invasion.

The barrage killed two officers and prosecutors said that it was driven by religious extremism.

Sergeant Hasan Akbar, who gave a brief, barely audible apology hours earlier, stood between his lawyers as the verdict was delivered. He showed no emotion.

He could have been sentenced to life in prison with or without parole for the attack, which also wounded 14 fellow members of the Army's 101st Airborne Division at Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait.

The 15-person military jury, which last week took just two and a half hours to convict Akbar of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder, deliberated for about seven hours in the sentencing phase. After reaching a verdict, they voted on whether to reconsider the decision after one juror asked that they do so.

The sentence will be reviewed by a commanding officer and automatically appealed. If Akbar is executed, it would be by lethal injection.

"I want to apologise for the attack that occurred. I felt that my life was in jeopardy, and I had no other options. I also want to ask you for forgiveness," Akbar told the jury.

Akbar, 34, spoke for less than a minute, delivering an unsworn statement that could not be cross-examined. He spoke in such a low voice that even prosecutors sitting nearby had trouble hearing.

While the defence contends Akbar was too mentally ill to plan the attack, they have never disputed that he threw grenades into troop tents in the early morning darkness and then fired on soldiers in the ensuing chaos. Army Captain Chris Seifert, 27, and Air Force Major Gregory Stone, 40, were killed.

Prosecutors say Akbar launched the attack days before the soldiers were to move to Iraq because he was concerned about troops killing fellow Muslims.

"He is a hate-filled, ideologically driven murderer," chief prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Michael Mulligan said. He added that Akbar wrote in his diary in 1997: "My life will not be complete unless America is destroyed."

Akbar is the first American since the Vietnam era to be prosecuted on charges of murdering a fellow soldier during wartime.

"Hasan Akbar has robbed me of so many things," Tammie Eslinger, Maj Stone's fiancee, said. "He stole my love, my family, my dreams and my future. But he could never steal my spirit." Capt Seifert's widow, Theresa, called Akbar "a nonentity to me."

Defence attorney Major David Coombs told jurors a sentence of life without parole would allow Akbar to be treated for mental illness and possibly rehabilitated.

"Death is an absolute punishment, a punishment of last resort," he said.

A defence psychiatrist testified that although Akbar was legally sane and understood the consequences of his attack, he suffered from forms of paranoia and schizophrenia.

Akbar's father, John Akbar, said his son complained to his superiors about religious and racial harassment before the attack.

However, the defence never introduced any witnesses to testify about any such harassment.

If given a death sentence, Akbar would join five others on the military's death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The last US military execution was in 1961.