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A court in Tanzania sentenced three Muslims to be hanged for having beheaded four Christians in 2015 during an outbreak of violence fueled by religion, said a legal source.
This East African country maintains the death penalty in its statutes, although no one has been executed since 1994.
High Court Judge Lameck Mlacha on Wednesday convicted the three murderers in the northwestern town of Bukoba, the source told the court, asking not to be named.
The conviction was based in part on a video in which the three men appeared to acknowledge to police and local authorities that the crime was motivated by religious beliefs, the source added.
They killed their victims on 11 November 2015 and left headless bodies to be found in Katoma, Bukoba district.
The three men are already serving prison sentences for their involvement in arson attacks targeting more than a dozen churches, prosecutor Hashim Ngole said, quoted by the Tanzanian press.
Ngole said that 13 other cases resulting from beheading of people and church fires in 2015 were undergoing judicial proceedings.
The convicts intend to appeal, according to their principal lawyer, Mathias Rweyemamu, who told the press that they had been tortured in detention, while the videotape of their confession was "a fake assembly".
In Tanzanian prisons, some 500 convicted prisoners face the death penalty or have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment.
President John Magufuli said he would not sign any death warrant.
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