Pakistan court orders immediate release of Daniel Pearl murder accused Omar Sheikh

The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Thursday declared “null and void” the detention of the prime suspect in the murder of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was beheaded in 2002.

On April 2, 2020, the court heard their appeals against the sentence after 18 years and acquitted Sheikh, Saqib and Nasim. It commuted Sheikh’s death sentence to seven years and fined him Rs2,000,000. Sheikh has already spent 18 years in prison on death row and his seven-year sentence for kidnapping was counted as time served.

The men were, however, detained under Section 11 EEEE (preventive detention for inquiry) of the Anti-Terrorism Act. According to the law, the government may issue preventive detention of any person accused of terrorism for a period of 90 days and it cannot be challenged in court. The first notification was issued the day the men were acquitted and the second one three months after they completed their detention period.

The court has ordered their immediate release, adding that their names should be put on the no-fly list.

These men have been in rotting in jail for the 18 years without committing any crime, said a judge.

Daniel Pearl, the 38-year-old South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, was abducted and beheaded while he was in Pakistan investigating a story in 2002 on the links between the country’s powerful spy agency ISI and al-Qaeda.

British-born al-Qaeda leader Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and his three aides were convicted and sentenced in the abduction and murder case of Pearl. In April, they were exonerated by the Sindh High Court and an appeal against their acquittal is being heard in the Supreme Court.