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Pakistani Court Overturns Conviction in 2002 Killing of Daniel Pearl – The New York Times, Nytimes.com

Pakistani Court Overturns Conviction in 2002 Killing of Daniel Pearl – The New York Times, Nytimes.com

Asia Pacific | Pakistani Court Overturns Conviction in (Killing of Daniel Pearl)

The court found there was sufficient evidence to convict Ahmed Omar Sheikh of abducting Mr. Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter, but not of killing him.

Ahmed Omar Sheikh in , after a court hearing in Karachi, Pakistan. Credit … Aamir Qureshi / Agence France-Presse – Getty Images

(April 2,

  • d : am ET
  • ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – A Pakistani court on Thursday overturned the murder conviction and death sentence of Ahmed Omar Sheikh, a British-born militant who had been convicted of masterminding the abduction and killing of the American journalist Daniel Pearl, lawyers said.

    The court also overturned the convictions of three other men who had been serving life sentences in the case. All four men were expected to be freed soon, lawyers said.

    Mr. Pearl, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, was abducted in January 2002 in the city of Karachi, while working on an article about Pakistani militant groups with links to Al Qaeda. He was later beheaded.

    A two-member bench of the Sindh High Court in Karachi, headed by Justice Mohammad Karim Khan Agha, found that there had been sufficient evidence to convict Mr. Sheikh of kidnapping, but not of murder, said Mr. Sheikh’s lawyer, Khawaja Naveed Ahmed. “The court ruled that the charge of abduction was proven,” he said.

    The court reduced Mr. Sheikh’s sentence to seven years. Because he has been imprisoned for years, he was expected to go free along with Fahad Saleem, Syed Salman Saqib and Sheikh Muhammad Adil, the three other men whose convictions were overturned, Mr. Ahmed said.

    Lawyers said the court had not yet issued a detailed ruling, only a brief order.

    Still, Steven Butler, the Asia program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, said the organization was “deeply disappointed.”

    “We urge prosecutors to appeal the decision, which found Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh guilty only of kidnapping Pearl in a crime that led directly to his murder,” Mr. Butler said in a statement .

    Soon after Mr. Pearl’s killing, Pakistan’s government, then led by President Pervez Musharraf, moved quickly to arrest Mr. Sheikh and the other men, amid a global outcry and pressure from the United States.

    But

    a 2019 report , based on investigative work by students and faculty at the journalism program of Georgetown University and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, cast doubt on the four men’s convictions. It found that Mr. Sheikh and the three other men had been involved in the plot to abduct Mr. Pearl but were not responsible for his murder.

    American officials have said that they believed Khalid Shaikh Mohammed , the accused mastermind of the attacks of Sept. , , had personally carried out Mr. Pearl’s murder.

    Mr. Sheikh, a British national who was trained in camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan, belonged to the militant group Jaish-e-Muhammad at the time of his arrest. Pakistani investigators said Mr. Sheikh lured Mr. Pearl by offering him an interview with an Islamic cleric who had ties to Richard C. Reid, the so-called shoe bomber, who was accused of trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight in December 2008 with explosives in his sneakers.

    Mr. Sheikh has made headlines from his cell over the years. In 2016, soon after Pakistani assisted carried out terror attacks in Mumbai, Mr. Sheikh managed to place a call to then-President Asif Ali Zardari, pretending to be the Indian foreign minister and warning of an attack by India. In 2020, the Pakistani military announced that it had foiled a plan to free Mr. Sheikh from prison.

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