Man jailed for killing Daniel Pearl may walk free this week
A British-born man convicted over the gruesome 2002 murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl could walk free later this week after a ruling by Pakistan’s supreme court.
The court refused on Monday a government request to suspend a lower court’s ruling exonerating Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh of Pearl’s murder before a 90-day detention order expires on Thursday.
The supreme court also refused to immediately hear the appeal and instead said it would be heard on 25 September.
Sheikh was ordered to remain in detention in April after the Sindh high court overturned the murder conviction and death sentence, generating outrage from Pearl’s family, the US government and media rights groups.
The 90-day detention was ordered under a public order regulation that allows detainees to be held longer if their release could incite violence and chaos.
The lower court upheld a kidnapping charge that carries a seven-year sentence. Sheikh has been in prison for 18 years, all spent on death row.
“For 18 years he hasn’t even seen the sun. He has been in solitary confinement on death row,” his lawyer Mahmood Sheikh, no relation, said.
Pearl’s parents have also filed an appeal challenging the lower court’s ruling.
The government prosecutor, Faiz Shah, declined to say whether the government would seek an extension of Sheikh’s detention.
The Sindh high court in April also acquitted three others accused in the case: Fahad Naseem, Sheikh Adil, and Salman Saqib, who were earlier sentenced to life in prison.
Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was kidnapped and beheaded in Pakistan in early 2002 while working on a story about Islamic militants.
In court testimony and emails released during his 2002 trial, Sheikh said he developed a personal relationship with Pearl before he was kidnapped, with both sharing their concerns about their wives who were pregnant at the time.
The Pearl Project, an investigative journalism team at Georgetown University, concluded the reporter was beheaded by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and later described as the architect of the 9/11 attacks. Mohammad is a prisoner at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay.
“The prosecution’s cases are won or lost not on the basis of emotion, they are won or lost on the basis of evidence and in this case the prosecution did a woeful job,” said Sheikh, the lawyer. “If Daniel Pearl’s parents have any grievance or complaint it should be against the Pakistani authorities for the prosecution’s failings.”
Saeed Sheikh was born in Britain and enjoyed a privileged upbringing, later studying at the London School of Economics.
He was arrested in India for his involvement in the kidnapping of western tourists in 1994 as part of his support for Muslim separatists battling Indian security forces in the disputed Kashmir region.
He was one of three men released from an Indian prison after militants hijacked an Indian airliner in late 1999 and flew it to Afghanistan.