KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Thursday overturned the death sentence for British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was convicted 18 years ago by an anti-terrorism court in the kidnapping and beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl.
A two-judge bench of the high court, headed by Justice Mohammad Karim Khan Agha, had reserved the judgment last month after hearing arguments of appellants and state counsel.
Omar Sheikh’s lawyer Khawja Naveed told a foreign news agency his client’s sentence had been reduced to seven years in prison following a lengthy appeals process. Since Omar Sheikh had been in prison since 2002, he was expected to be released, but the court had not yet issued that order, Naveed added. He was sentenced in July 2002 for abducting and murdering Pearl.
Saleem Akhtar, a prosecutor in the case, said he would file a petition in the Supreme Court against Thursday’s verdict. “It is a very detailed verdict and I have to go through it thoroughly to prepare the grounds for the appeal,” Akhtar said, adding he hoped to file the appeal within two days.
The court also overturned the convictions of three other men Fahad Naseem, Syed Salman Saqib and Sheikh Mohammad Adil in the case. They had been convicted of abetting Omar and sentenced to life in prison. It was not immediately clear when they might be released.
The counsels for defense Rai Bashir and Khawaja Naveed had submitted to the court the prosecution had failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt. They argued the prosecution witnesses in the case against Shiekh and other convicts were mostly policemen and their testimonies could not be relied upon. They said there was no eyewitness to the crime and the prosecution relied upon very weak circumstantial evidence for conviction.
The deputy prosecutor general, Saleem Akhtar, however, had supported the anti-terrorism court’s judgment and submitted the prosecution had proved its case against the appellants beyond any shadow of a doubt while requesting the court to dismiss the appeals. After hearing the arguments of all the parties to the case, the SHC bench commuted the sentence of the prime accused and acquitted three co-accused.
Pearl, 38, was the South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal when he was abducted in Karachi in January 2002 while researching a story about militants.
A graphic video showing his decapitation was delivered to the US consulate in the city nearly a month later. Omar Sheikh was arrested in 2002 and an anti-terror court sentenced him to death by hanging.
In January 2011, a report released by the Pearl Project at Georgetown University following an investigation into his death made chilling revelations, claiming that the wrong men were convicted for Pearl’s murder.
In 2014, an anti-terrorism court acquitted Qari Hashim, who had been arrested in the case in 2005. The judge at the time said there was a lack of evidence in the case.
The investigation, led by Pearl’s friend and former Wall Street Journal colleague Asra Nomani and a Georgetown University professor, claimed the reporter was murdered by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks, not Omar Sheikh.
Mohammed—better known as KSM—is being held in Guantanamo Bay. A US psychologist who interviewed KSM said the prisoner had told him that he had beheaded Pearl.