The court has also acquitted three other accomplices including Fahad Naseem, Syed Salman Saqib and Sheikh Muhammad Adil due to lack of evidence against them.
KARACHI: (UrduPoint/Pakistan Point News-April 2nd, 2020) The Sindh High Court on Thursday reduced the death sentence of main accused in murder-cum-kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl to seven year imprisonment here on Thursday.
A SHC division passed the order on appeals filed by the convicts, pleading the court to set aside their sentences and conviction.
The state also moved an appeal before the appellate court seeking enhancement of the three co-accused’s life terms to capital punishment.
The court also acquitted three co-accused in the case over charges of kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journalist reporter Daniel Pearl.
Khawaja Naveed, the defence counsel, told the reporters outside the court that the bench overturned death sentence awarded to Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh and ordered to acquit to three convicts in the case.
“The prosecution could not establish the murder charges and therefore, the court awarded him seven years jail for kidnapping,” said the counsel.
“Omar has already served 18 years so his release orders will be issued sometime today,” Naveed said, adding that he would be out very soon.
Daniel Pearl, the US national and South Asian region bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped on January 23, 2002 , in Karachi. The kidnappers beheaded him after their demands were not met.
Earlier, during the arguments before the Sindh High Court, the counsel of the convicts argued that the prosecution failed to provide enough evidence to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that their clients participated or abetted in the crime. After hearing arguments of both sides, the bench commuted death sentence of main accused to life-imprisonment and acquitted all three others in the case.
Qari Hashim, another co-accused in the same case, had already been set free by an Anti-Terrorism Court due to lack of evidence in 2014.
On July 15, 2002, a Hyderabad Anti-Terrorism court convicted four people in connection with Pearl’s murder including Ahmad Omar saeed Sheikh who was sentenced to death in 2002 as the main accused in murder case of Daniel Pearl. Fahad Naseem, Syed Salman Saqib and Sheikh Muhammad Adil were the other convicts who were sentenced to life imprisonment with a fine of Rs500,000 each.
