Kabul, Afghanistan ? Afghan judges sentenced a man to death Saturday for the slaying of three foreign journalists and an Afghan collegue, who were pulled from their cars, robbed and shot as they rushed to cover the collapse of the Taliban.

The judges also convicted Reza Khan of raping an Italian reporter before she died in one of the deadliest attacks on foreign civilians since the fall of the former hardline regime.

“You are sentenced to death,” Presiding Judge Abdul Baset Bakhtyari told Khan at Afghanistan’s Primary National Security Court.

Armed men stopped the journalists as they drove from the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad to the capital on Nov. 19, 2001, six days after the Taliban abandoned Kabul after heavy U.S. bombing.

The four were Australian TV cameraman Harry Burton and Afghan photographer Azizullah Haidari of Reuters new agency, Maria Grazia Cutuli of Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, and Julio Fuentes of the Spanish El Mundo daily. Afghan media had speculated that enraged Taliban and al-Qaida forces falling back from Kabul had killed the reporters.

It was unclear whether Khan, who listened impassively as the verdict was announced, would appeal the death sentence or a separate 15-year jail term for committing “adultery by force” with Cutuli. In court, he denied committing the killings or the rape.

In a confession broadcast on Afghan state television in August, Khan admitted shooting one of the foreigners — it was unclear which — and raping Cutuli. He said the motive was banditry rather than politics.

But, appearing in court Wednesday, he said another member of the gang called Rohullah shot the journalists and denied the rape charge.