US could seek to try Omar Sheikh in American court

The separate judicial rulings reversing his conviction and ordering his release are an affront to terrorism victims everywhere. JEFFREY ROSEN, Acting attorney general, US

WASHINGTON/NEW DELHI: The United States may seek to try in a US court al Qaeda leader Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh who has been accused of killing American journalist Daniel Pearl after a Pakistani court ordered his release, acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen said on Tuesday.

Last week, a Pakistani court ordered the release of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the main suspect in the 2002 kidnapping and murder of Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter, after his conviction was overturned.

“The separate judicial rulings reversing his conviction and ordering his release are an affront to terrorism victims everywhere,” Rosen said in a statement.

If efforts to reinstate Sheikh’s conviction were not successful, he said, “The United States stands ready to take custody of Omar Sheikh to stand trial here.

“We cannot allow him to evade justice for his role in Daniel Pearl’s abduction and murder,” Rosen added.

Last week, the Sindh province government in Pakistan decided not to release Omar Sheikh and his three aides in view of a Supreme Court order, just days after the

Sindh high court ordered their immediate release.

The high court had declared the detention of Omar Sheikh -one of the three terrorists freed by India in 1999 in exchange for passengers of a hijacked airliner – null and void. Sheikh and three other accused were acquitted of

Pearl’s murder by the Sindh high court in April, but had remained in jail while the ruling was appealed.

A two-judge bench of the high court directed authorities not to keep Sheikh and the other men under “any sort of detention” and said all notifications issued by the Sindh government for their detention were “null and void”.

Pearl, 38, was South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal when he was abducted in Karachi in January 2002 while researching links between terrorists in Pakistan and Richard C Reid, known as the “shoe bomber” for trying to detonate a bomb while on a flight from

Paris to Miami in 2001. Pearl was later killed by his captors in Karachi.

The Sindh government and Pearl’s parents had filed separate appeals against the April 2 order of the Sindh high court that modified Omar Sheikh’s death sentence to seven-year rigorous imprisonment with a fine of ₹2 million. The Sindh high court heard the appeals of accused Omar Sheikh, Fahad Naseem, Adil Sheikh and Salman Saqib against their sentence and acquitted Omar Sheikh, Saqib and Nasim. Omar Sheikh has spent 18 years on death row and his seven-year sentence for kidnapping was counted in the time already served.