TAKE SHEIKH OFF DEATH ROW, PAK SC TELLS GOVT

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered that Ahmad Saeed Omar Sheikh, the Pakistani-british al Qaeda terrorist acquitted of the 2002 gruesome beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl, be taken off death row and moved to a government “safe house”.

Sheikh, who has been on death row for 18 years, will be under guard and will not be allowed to leave the safe house, but he will be able to have his wife and children visit him.

“It is not complete freedom. It is a step toward freedom,” said Sheikh’s father, Ahmad Saeed Sheikh. The Pakistan government has been scrambling to keep Sheikh in jail since a Supreme Court order last Thursday upheld his acquittal in the death of Pearl, triggering outrage by Pearl’s family and the US administration.