Good Riddance, Hasan Akbar

Off to your martyr's reward. (HT: Michelle)

The death sentence for convicted murderer Sgt. Hasan Akbar was approved late last week at Fort Bragg, N.C., by Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, commander if XXVIII Airborne Corps and court martial convening authority in the case.

Akbar was sentenced to death in April 2005 by unanimous vote of a military panel for the March 23, 2003, grenade attack that killed Capt. Christopher Seifert and Maj. Gregory Stone.

The grenade attack, which also wounded 14 others, took place at Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait, where the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, was preparing to cross the berm into Iraq.

Akbar lobbed grenades into three tents while members of the brigade slept, and then fired shots at those who emerged from the smoky blasts.

Despite the unanimous vote to uphold Akbar's sentence, the murderer has multiple avenues of life-extension remaining.

It now goes to the Army Court of Criminal Appeals and then to the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. Akbar also has the option to petition the U.S. Supreme Court for review. There hasn’t been a military execution since 1961.

That most recent execution did away with John Bennett, an epileptic who was drunk when he raped and attempted (but failed) to murder an 11-year-old Austrian girl.  Surely if Bennett deserved the death penalty (which President Kennedy upheld, despite pleas from the victim and her parents to spare Bennett's life), we can find a little potassium chloride for Mr. Akbar.