E-Paper
Daniel Pearl murder: Where does the case now stand amid US pressure
On Thursday, Pakistan's Supreme Court ordered the release of all accused involved in the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl.
Pakistan’s Supreme Court has reportedly fixed February 1 for the hearing on the Sindh government's petition against the acquittal of all accused involved in the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl. According to Pakistani daily The Express Tribune, the three-judge bench led by Justice Umar Ata Bandial will take up the plea seeking a stay on Sindh high court’s December 24 decision in which the court had declared the detention of the accused illegal.
On Thursday, the top court dismissed the appeals against the acquittal and ordered the release of all the accused, which was denounced by Pearl’s family as “a complete travesty of justice.” In a phone call with Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, US secretary of state Antony Blinken has reinforced the concern about the ruling and potential release of the prisoners. He called on Qureshi to ensure accountability for British-born convicted al Qaeda terrorist Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and others responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl. According to the Pakistan Foreign Office, Qureshi “underscored that it was important and in the mutual interest that justice is served through legal means.”
In January 2002, Pearl, who headed the South Asia bureau of The Wall Street Journal, was abducted in Karachi while working on a story about terror groups linked to al Qaeda. About a month later, a graphic video of Pearl’s beheading was sent to the US consulate in Karachi, sparking global outrage. Sheikh and three of his aides were arrested and, later, convicted by an anti-terrorism court in Pearl’s kidnapping and murder case.
Sheikh was sentenced to death and his aides were sentenced to life in prison. In April 2020, Sindh high court overturned the murder conviction and found Sheikh only guilty of kidnapping the WSJ journalist, commuting Sheikh’s death sentence to seven years of imprisonment and acquitting the three others - Fahad Nasim Ahmed, Syed Salman Saqib and Sheikh Adil.
The Pakistan Peoples Party-led provincial government of Sindh then challenged the ruling in the Supreme Court and refused to release the four accused. The government kept them in detention under the Maintenance of Public Order for three months and extended it further under the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997.
The provincial government has challenged the December 24 decision, claiming that the release order did not contain detailed reasons. Sindh advocate general Suleman Talibuddin told the court during a hearing on last Monday that one of the observations in the court’s order suggested that the accused persons are not “enemy aliens” within the meaning of Article 10 (9) of the Constitution. “Meaning of this term is hitherto judicially unexplained," Talibuddin said.
The court has now fixed the date for the hearing on the Sindh government's plea amid pressure from the United States as well as the United Nations. The bench will examine the legal term "enemy aliens" that needs to be explained in the context of the Daniel Pearl murder case. The Sindh government had claimed that the accused fall in the category of "enemy aliens" and told the apex court that they had placed material as proof on record as justification but the High Court rejected it.
"Now the Sindh government has requested the bench to pronounce authoritative judgment on the law and facts," read the order-sheet issued by the Justice Bandial bench.
(with inputs from agencies)
