Daniel Pearl murder case: Detention of suspects prolonged again

KARACHI: Sindh government ordered on Wednesday an extension in detention of Daniel Pearl assassination case suspects for three more months, ARY News reported.

The suspects were acquitted in April by the Sindh High Court in the 2002 journalist Daniel Pearl assassination case.

Extension in the suspects’ detention has been apprised via notification by the provincial interior ministry.

The notification read that the suspects will remain arrested in the light of Anti-Terrorism Act and that the three will remain in the custody in either central Karachi jail or Sukkar jail.

The three suspects in the abduction and beheading of Wall Street Journal journalist are Ahmed Omer Saeed, Fahad Naseem and Salman Saqib were tried by an anti-terrorism court of Hyderabad.

The ATC had also directed the convicts to pay Rs two million to the victim’s widow, Marianne Pearl.

The court had awarded death sentence to key accused Omer Saeed Sheikh on July 15 in 2002, on the charges of kidnapping and killing the US journalist. While his three accomplices Fahad Naseem, Syed Salman Saqib and Sheikh Muhammad Adil were handed a life sentence with a fine of Rs 600,000 each.

Daniel Pearl, a reporter of The Wall Street Journal, went missing in Karachi in January 2002 while he was working on a story and was later found murdered.

READ: SC grants appeal in Daniel Pearl murder case for preliminary hearing

However, the Sindh High Court (SHC) in its verdict on April 2 overturned the sentences of four convicts in the case of the slain American journalist Daniel Pearl.