KARACHI: The family of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and beheaded in Karachi in 2002, plans to appeal to Supreme Court (SC) to review its decision to free the four men convicted of his murder.
A three-judge panel on Thursday threw out the murder convictions against the four suspects, including group’s British-born ringleader, Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh.
Kidnapping convictions were left in place, but the men were ordered freed as they had already served out sentences for the kidnapping charges.
The case appears to have fallen apart because of the contradictory evidence produced during Sheikh’s original trial in 2002 and the decision by the prosecution at the time to try him and three other accused co-conspirators together.
According to the Pearl family lawyer, Faisal Siddiqi, this means that doubt about the guilt of one translates into a doubt about all.
The family “intends to file a review petition against the illegal and unjust majority decision of the Supreme Court of Pakistan,” said a statement issued by Siddiqui late Saturday night.
On Friday, the Sindh government also filed an appeal to the apex court to review its decision. A hearing for that appeal has been set for Monday.
The United States has expressed concern over the ruling and the new Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for accountability in his first phone call with Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Friday.
Washington has vowed to pursue the extradition of Sheikh on two separate US indictments against him. For its part, Islamabad has thrown up every legal hurdle it could to keep Sheikh in jail following his acquittal last April by Sindh High Court (SHC).
Pearl, 38, 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.
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 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 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”.
With additional input from Reuters and the Associated Press
