After 18 years of denial the British-born militant who was convicted and later acquitted of the beheading of the American journalist Daniel Pearl has told a court he played a “minor” role in the killing, according to the Pearl family lawyer.
A letter handwritten by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, in 2019, in which he admitted limited involvement in the killing of the Wall Street Journal reporter, was submitted to Pakistan’s supreme court nearly two weeks ago. On Wednesday lawyers for Sheikh confirmed that their client had written the letter.
It came as a Pakistani high court heard an appeal over a lower court’s acquittal of Sheikh, who was initially charged with murder concerning the beheading of Pearl in 2002. The appeal was filed by Pearl’s family and the Pakistan government.
Nowhere in the three-page letter addressed to the Sindh high court did Sheikh elaborate or say exactly what his allegedly minor role in Pearl’s death had involved.
Pearl, a reporter from Encino, California, was abducted on 23 January 2002. A video of the beheading of the 38-year-old was later sent to the US consulate in Karachi. Pearl’s body was found in a shallow grave in a southern district of the city.
Faisal Siddiqi, the Pearl family lawyer, called Sheikh’s confirmation that he wrote the letter a “dramatic development” and demanded the conviction and death sentence for Sheikh be reinstated.
“This is very, very important because for the last 18 years the position of [Sheikh] was that he did not know Danny Pearl, he never met Danny Pearl,” Siddiqi told the Associated Press. “He had taken a position of complete ignorance regarding this case, but now in a handwritten letter he has admitted to at least a limited role.”
Siddiqi added: “He has not asked that he be acquitted. He accepts his guilt but asks that his sentence may be reduced.”
In the letter Sheikh says “my role in this matter was a relatively minor one, which does not warrant the death sentence”. A copy of the letter was obtained by the AP.
Sheikh also says he knows who killed Pearl and alleges it was Atta-ur-Rahman, alias Naeem Bokhari, a Pakistani militant, who has since been executed in connection with an attack on a paramilitary base in southern Karachi.
In the letter, dated 25 July 2019 and stamped with the seal of the high court of Sindh, Sheikh asks for the opportunity to clarify his “actual role in this matter” so that his sentence may be “reduced accordingly to one which is consistent with the requirement of justice”.
However, Sheikh’s lawyer, Mehmood A Sheikh, claimed his client had written the letter under duress and that he did not know, nor have any connection, with Pearl.
The lawyer, who is not related to the accused, said his client described the conditions in his prison as “worse than the life of an animal” and wrote the letter in an attempt to get a hearing, not make an admission of guilt. “He wanted to be able to be heard,” the lawyer said.
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The appeal was expected to be wrapped up this week, Siddiqi said. He said he expected a quick decision after Sheikh’s admission of involvement, even in a minor capacity, in Pearl’s death. “This changes everything,” he said of the letter.
Sheikh was convicted of helping to lure Pearl to a meeting in Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi, during which he was kidnapped. The reporter was investigating the link between Pakistani militants and Richard C Reid, who was dubbed the “shoe bomber” after trying to blow up a flight from Paris to Miami with explosives hidden in his shoes.
Sheikh was sentenced to death, and three other suspects were sentenced to life in prison for their roles in the plot. The acquittal last April stunned the US government, Pearl’s family and journalism advocacy groups.
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