KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan court sentenced two men to death by hanging Thursday for killing an Afghan businessman and kidnapping an Italian aid worker, a crime that fueled fears of Iraq-style abductions in Kabul.

The National Security Court sentenced a third defendant to 20 years in prison for involvement in the kidnapping of CARE International worker Clementina Cantoni.

The verdicts from Afghanistan’s fledgling legal system came days after another keystone of the nation’s experiment with democracy. The nation’s first popularly elected parliament in more than 30 years convened in the capital, Kabul, on Monday.

Cantoni, who was working on a project helping Afghan widows and their families, was kidnapped in the capital by armed men May 16 and released unharmed June 9. During her captivity, an Afghan television station broadcast a video that showed her sitting and two men standing next to her pointing assault rifles at her head.

Two defendants, Temur Shah and a man identified only as Haroom, were sentenced to death by hanging after a one-day trial, said court president Abdul Baset Bakhtyari. A third man, known only as Esat, received 20 years in prison.

The men plan to appeal, Bakhtyari said.

Shah and Haroom also were accused of kidnapping businessman Hafid Ullah Zadan earlier this year and demanding a $500,000 ransom. When Zadan refused, Shah drowned him in a deep well near his house in Kabul, Bakhtyari said.

Shah had confessed to both crimes, he said.

There has been a spate of abductions and attempted kidnappings during the past year, frightening Kabul’s foreign community amid concerns that criminals and Taliban-linked rebels could be mimicking militants in Iraq.

Meanwhile, a patrol of U.S.-led coalition forces and Afghan police came under attack in central Ghazni province, triggering a shootout that left two rebels dead and three injured, the U.S. military and an Afghan official said. An Afghan policeman was killed.

More than 1,500 people have been killed this year in the deadliest militant violence since American-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001.

An Afghan journalists’ association and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists hailed the imminent release of Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, who was convicted of blasphemy in October because of articles published in his magazine Haqooq-i-Zan — or Women’s Rights.

One article criticized a provision under Shariah, or Islamic law, calling for adulterers to be punished with 100 lashes.

An appeals court reduced Nasab’s sentence to six months and suspended the remaining three months after he apologized to the court for the articles, said Maulvi Muhayuddin Baluch, a religious affairs adviser to President Hamid Karzai.

Nasab was expected to be released from prison Saturday, said Abdul Razzaq, the magazine’s deputy editor.

“We are very happy but it was international pressure, human rights groups and our organization that got him released,” said Rahimullah Samandar, head of the Afghan Independent Journalists’ Association.

Ann Cooper, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said the court order was a “positive development for the Afghan media.”

“The constitutional protections guaranteeing freedom of the press must be respected by the government,” she said in a statement.

Nasab’s case underlines the fragility of press freedoms in Afghanistan, a conservative Islamic country where tensions between religious moderates and hard-liners still prevail.

A revised March 2004 media law banned content deemed insulting to Islam. Criminal penalties were left vaguely worded, leaving open the possibility of punishment in accordance with Shariah.