SHC hears appeals of accused in Daniel Pearl case

KARACHI: A bench of the Sindh High Court on Wednesday heard appeals of the accused detained in the Daniel Pearl case, ARY News reported. 

Daniel Pearl, an American journalist, who was abducted and later beheaded in Karachi in Year 2002 allegedly by the members of Al-Qaeda terrorist network.

The court adjourned the hearing until March 05 due to the defence counsel’s engagement in a case at Supreme Court.

In earlier hearing, the bench had sought the detention record of the accused from jail authorities.

The lawyer defending the accused in previous hearing argued before the court that he believed the life term of his clients had completed and none of the witnesses in the case was an eye witness.

The prosecution lawyer told the bench that the government of Sindh had approached the court regarding extension in term handed to the accused in the case.

An anti-terrorism court of Hyderabad, had awarded death sentence to key accused of the case 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 life sentence with a fine of Rs 600,000 each.

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

The state had filed an appeal seeking the life terms of three convicts to be converted in death penalty.

Daniel Pearl, a reporter of The Wall Street Journal, went missing in Karachi in January 2002 while he was working on a story on militants. He was later found to be abducted and beheaded.
An Al-Qaeda member Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in March 2007, at a closed military hearing in Guantánamo Bay, claimed that he had personally beheaded the US journalist.