ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court (SC) was informed on Tuesday that the trial court, which heard slain American journalist Daniel Pearl’s case, and its witnesses received threats during the course of the trial.
Pearl, 38, the South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, was abducted on January 23, 2002, in Karachi and beheaded the next month, reportedly by Al-Qaeda.
Sheikh had been convicted of helping lure Pearl to a meeting in Karachi in which he was kidnapped. In April 2019, the Sindh High Court (SHC) ordered the government to release the four accused — including the principal suspect in the case British-national Omar Saeed Sheikh — after allegations against them could not be proved.
A three-judge bench, headed by Justice Mushir Alam, was hearing an appeal filed by the Sindh government and Pearl’s parents against the SHC decision.
During Tuesday’s hearing, the legal counsel for Pearl’s parents, Faisal Siddiqui, said that the case was shifted from Karachi to Hyderabad due to threats.
Siddiqui also argued that terrorism cases were filed on the basis of “confessional statements”. He urged the court to “create a balance between the basic rights of the petitioner and the accused”.
Omar’s legal representative Mehmood Sheikh, in his arguments, labelled the case as “false and a result of pressure”. He said that the United States had sent the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents to assist the murder investigation. “No country sends its investigative institutions after its ordinary citizens,” he said.
Speaking about the legal process that led to Sheikh’s sentencing, Mehmood said the witnesses produced by the prosecution “gave contradictory statements during the investigation and [in] court”.
“Daniel Pearl was an American citizen, that’s why the evidence was planted,” the lawyer added.
Mehmood said that in the case, it was stated that the “murder conspiracy” was hatched in a hotel in Rawalpindi. However, the hotel’s receptionist had said that he did not know Omar Sheikh, Mehmood said, adding that “confessional statements were extracted from the suspects through torture.”
The counsel also argued that there was no evidence of any meeting between the suspects.
The case was adjourned until Wednesday.
Prior to his kidnapping, Pearl had been investigating the link between reportedly Pakistan-based militants and Richard Reid, the notorious “Shoe Bomber” who attempted to blow up a flight from Paris to Miami with explosives hidden in his shoes.
In July 2002, following the hearings, an anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Hyderabad had sentenced to death Sheikh and life term to other co-accused. However, all four convicts had moved the SHC in 2002 challenging their convictions.
In his autobiography, In the Line of Fire: A Memoir, former president Pervaiz Musharraf had claimed that Sheikh, a student at the London School of Economics (reports claim that he did not graduate), was hired by MI6 to engage in “jihadi operations”, adding that “at some point, he probably became a rogue or a double agent”.
