One of the convicts was even given a death sentence.

Jamshid Rasouli, spokesman of the Attorney General Office (AGO), told Pajhwok Afghan News in Kabul that the murder case for being sensitive was heard in Kabul instead of Khost province it had happened.

The court sentenced one of the accused to death, another to 30 years in jail and the third to six years in jail, reported the Afghanistan-based news agency.

BBC reporter killed:

Unknown gunmen shot dead  Ahmad Shah in Khost City last year.

Shah worked for the BBC's Pashto language service and he was killed in April last year.

Ahmad Shah joined the BBC from local radio in early 2017 with a brief to cover his home province of Khost, in south-eastern Afghanistan, but he branched out to cover the neighbouring provinces of Paktia and Paktika as well for television, radio and online, reported BBC.

He first started working for the BBC as a freelance contributor before being recruited as a full-time reporter by BBC Pashto, reported the British media outlet.

The Taliban had rejected its involvement in the incident.

CPJ shares shocking tale:

As per the Committee to Protect Journalists report, the number of journalists targeted for murder in reprisal for their reporting nearly doubled in 2018 from a year earlier, driving up the overall count of journalists killed on the job. Afghanistan, where extremists have stepped up deliberate attacks on journalists, was the deadliest country and accounted for much of the increase. 

"In recent years, extremists have launched major bombings in Afghanistan, then detonated a second blast with the apparent express aim of killing journalists and other first responders. On April 30, 2018, one such double suicide attack claimed by the militant group Islamic State killed nine journalists. In an especially cynical ploy, the attacker disguised himself as a media worker and detonated his explosives amid a group of reporters rushing to the scene of the first explosion," the report further said.