[photo credit: NY Times]

A Pakastani soldier was sentenced to death on Friday as a result of shooting and killing an unarmed teenager back in June. Read more details of the trial after the jump and watch the video of the fatal shooting that went viral and sent shockwaves through the media. (Viewer Discretion is Advised!!)

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(NYTimes)–

Pakistani court handed down a death sentence on Friday in the case of a paramilitary soldier who shot an unarmed teenager in the southern port city of Karachi in June, a killing captured on a widely circulated video that sent shockwaves through the country.

Pakistani paramilitary soldier Shahid Zafar, center, as he was escorted to court in Karachi on Friday. Zafar was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death for killing an unarmed man at point blank range in an incident caught on camera in a public park.
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Six other defendants — five paramilitary troopers and a civilian security guard — received life sentences. The soldier sentenced to death was also fined $2,300.

The trial was completed in just over two months, a rarity in Pakistan, where the judicial process is usually slow and tedious and it often takes years before any verdict is announced. The sentences will be appealed, a defense lawyer said.

The video of the fatal shooting, recorded by a local cameraman, showed the teenager unarmed and repeatedly begging for mercy before he was shot. Broadcast repeatedly on television and posted on the Internet, the footage drew protests and condemnations from politicians and human rights groups. President Asif Ali Zardari initiated an inquiry and the top court’s chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, ordered the defendants tried in an anti-terrorism court.

The family of the youth, Sarfraz Shah, 19, maintained that he was had simply been walking in the park when the soldiers accosted him.

The troops — a unit of Rangers, a paramilitary force deployed to help maintain order in volatile Karachi — said Mr. Shah had used a fake gun in an attempted robbery.

After he was stopped, defense lawyers said, the soldiers told him to sit down but instead he grabbed onto one of the weapons they trained on him. The soldier holding the gun, Shahid Zafar, thought he was trying to snatch it. He shot the youth twice.

Mr. Zafar received the death sentence.

On Friday, the family of Mr. Shah expressed satisfaction.

“We are satisfied,” Salik Shah, a brother, was quoted as saying by local news media. “We hope the higher courts will uphold the sentence.”

Analysts gave mixed reviews of the verdict.

“It is a verdict given in a pro-prosecution environment,” said Mehreen Zahra-Malik, an assistant editor of The News, a leading English-language daily.

Raza Rumi, a columnist and consulting editor of The Friday Times, a Lahore-based weekly, said, “It is a very good decision, reflective of the fact that when the courts want, the process of law can be expedited.”

He added that the credibility of the armed forces had taken a nose dive in recent months. “It was very important to show that it was willing to punish errant officials,” he said.

Human Rights Watch, the New York based advocacy group, saluted the guilty verdicts, though not the death sentence.

“The verdict should go some way in arresting the impunity for abuses by Pakistan’s trigger-happy security and paramilitary agencies,” said Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan director at Human Rights Watch. “There is no greater deterrent to abuse than fear of accountability.”

WATCH:

(via 154 media)