Pakistan’s supreme court has ordered the release of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the British-born Islamist militant who had been sentenced to death for the murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.
Pearl was kidnapped in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi in January 2002 during an investigation into al-Qaida and beheaded by Islamic militants, with a video of the killing posted online.
Sheikh was convicted of masterminding Pearl’s murder and given the death penalty in 2002. However, Sheikh always denied his role, and questions remained over whether he had actually carried out the killing, or just been a secondary figure involved in the kidnapping. A recently revealed letter showed Sheikh seeming to admit a “relatively minor” role in Pearl’s murder for the first time, although his lawyer says this was written under duress.
In April, the Sindh high court commuted Sheikh’s sentence from execution for murder to seven years in jail for kidnapping, and acquitted three co-defendants accused in the case. As Sheikh had already served 18 years in jail, the court ordered his release.
However, his release was delayed after Pearl’s family and the Sindh state government of Pakistan both appealed against the decision in the supreme court and requested Sheikh’s jail sentence be extended.
On Thursday, after a majority ruling of 2-1, the supreme court judges upheld the decision of the Sindh high court and dismissed the appeals.
Sheikh’s lawyer, Mahmood A Sheikh, said he could be released as soon as Friday.
“It depends upon how fast the government of Sindh will be in obeying and implementing the order of supreme court of Pakistan,” he said. “Sheikh is in their custody and the Sindh government can release him tomorrow if they want. It’s on them.”
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In a statement to the Guardian, Pearl’s family lawyer, Faisal Siddiqi, said the family were in “complete shock” at the decision to acquit Sheikh of the murder and allow his release.
“Today’s decision is a complete travesty of justice and the release of these killers puts in danger journalists everywhere and the people of Pakistan,” they said.
“We urge the US government to take all necessary actions under the law to correct this injustice. We also hope that the Pakistani authorities will take all necessary steps to rectify this travesty of justice. No amount of injustice will defeat our resolve to fight for justice for Daniel Pearl.”
The ruling is likely to have implications in the US. In December, the US attorney general had said in a statement that the US “stands ready to take custody of Omar Sheikh to stand trial here” if the appeal by the Pearl family was unsuccessful.
“We cannot allow him to evade justice for his role in Daniel Pearl’s abduction and murder,” said the statement.
Sheikh was born in east London but had become radicalised in his early 20s during time spent in the Balkans coordinating relief for Muslims. He travelled to Pakistan, where he joined an Islamist militant group and was sent to Afghanistan for training.
Among evidence which came to light during the supreme court appeal was a handwritten letter written by Sheikh in 2019, in which he had admitted a “relatively minor” role in Pearl’s murder “which does not warrant the death sentence”. It was the first time that Sheikh had admitted to knowing Pearl, having previously denied any involvement in the incident.
In the letter, Sheikh blamed the killing on Pakistani Islamic militant Atta-ur-Rehman, alias Naeem Bokhari, who has since been executed for terrorism.
Sheikh’s lawyer, Mahmood A Sheikh, said that the letter was written under duress and “has to be seen in the context which was written”.
He added: “All charges are fabricated and fake. He was being treated worse than an animal in the prison. Sheikh said that he was made a scapegoat by the former dictator General [Pervez] Musharraf government because of the mounting pressure from the US government.”
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