ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday ordered the release of a Pakistan-origin British suspect convicted and later acquitted in the gruesome 2002 beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl.
The court also dismissed an appeal against Ahmad Saeed Omar Sheikh’s acquittal by Pearl’s family.
The short order was issued by a three-judge bench headed by Justice Mushir Alam. One judge opposed the decision.
“The court has come out to say that there is no offence that he has committed in this case,” Mahmood A Sheikh (no relation with the suspect), who represented Omar Sheikh, said.
He added that the court had ordered that three others, who had been sentenced to life in prison for their part in the kidnapping and death, also be freed.
“Today’s decision is a complete travesty of justice and the release of these killers puts in danger journalists everywhere and the people of Pakistan,” the Pearl family said in a statement released by their counsel.
The decision comes a day after Omar Sheikh told the Sindh High Court (SHC) he played a “minor” role in the killing, without further elaboration.
A letter handwritten by him in 2019, in which he admits limited involvement in the killing, was submitted nearly two weeks ago. It was not until Wednesday that Omar Sheikh’s lawyers confirmed that their client wrote it.
Nowhere in the three-page letter addressed to the SHC did Omar Sheikh elaborate or say exactly what his allegedly minor role in Pearl’s slaying involved.
Omar Sheikh has been on death row since his conviction in the death of Pearl in 2002. His attorney said that his client “should not have spent one day in jail.”
Washington previously said that it would demand Omar Sheikh be extradited to the United States to be tried there. There was no immediate reaction from the US embassy in Islamabad to the court order upholding the appeal.
Pearl was abducted on January 23, 2002, in Karachi and beheaded the next month, reportedly by Al-Qaeda. Omar Sheikh had been convicted of helping lure Pearl to a meeting in Karachi in which he was kidnapped.
Prior to his kidnapping, the journalist 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 Omar 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 British national and a student at the London School of Economics (reports suggest 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”.
Raju
Parmar
Daniel Pearl cut his throat himself and committed suicide. 😁