The Supreme Court will resume the hearing of Sindh government’s petition involving Ahmed Omer Saeed Sheikh, the principal accused in the murder of Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl on 25 match
A three-judge Supreme Court bench consisting of Justice Umar Ata Bandial, Justice Sajjad Ali Shah and Justice Munib Akhtar will take up the Sindh government’s application against the Dec 24, 2020, order of the Sindh High Court (SHC) declaring as illegal the June 29, 2020, provincial government notification of placing all the accused on the IV Schedule of the Anti Terrorism Act (ATA) of 1997, pursuant to Section 11EE, with an observation that none of the accused were “enemy aliens” as contemplated under Article 10(9) of the Constitution and as such their detention under this provision was found to be illegal and unlawful.
At the last hearing on Feb 2, 2021, the Supreme Court had ordered placing Saeed Sheikh in a residential environment like a government rest house with provision of facilities for a normal life, albeit without access to the outside world through telephone, internet, etc.
The directives were issued after Attorney General Khalid Jawed Khan and Advocate General for Sindh Salman Talibuddin had expressed concern that if Saeed Sheikh was released, he would either be taken away or may disappear.
The Supreme Court, while observing that the detenue was entitled to be freed from the custody under the Dec 24, 2020 SHC order, had ordered the authorities concerned to keep him in some residential facility.
The Supreme Court order had also stated that proper security arrangements should be ensured for keeping the detenue safe in the rest house and only his family should be allowed to meet him everyday from 8am till 5pm.
The Sindh government was ordered to provide immediate family of the detenue reasonable transportation and accommodation in Karachi.
What happened to Daniel Pearl?
In the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US, Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl travelled to Pakistan, working on stories about militant groups. He would end up becoming their victim himself.
First, haunting pictures of him in chains and with a gun to his head were released. Then, he was beheaded. His gruesome death was filmed by the extremists, a grim precursor to the tactics that have now become a common part of the propaganda videos of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group.
Omar Saeed Sheikh, the man accused of his murder, was born in Britain, where he attended a private, fee-paying school in East London, as well as the London School of Economics. However, he was drawn into jihadist circles. In 1994 he was imprisoned in India, after allegedly kidnapping a number of Western tourists. He was freed, along with two other militants, five years later, when gunmen hijacked an airliner, forcing it to land in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, and demanded the men be released in exchange for the passengers.
The prosecution alleged Sheikh first met Daniel Pearl at a hotel in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi in January 2002. Police said Mr Sheikh had used a fake name and pretended to be a follower of a hard-line cleric Pearl wanted to interview. Mr Sheikh’s lawyers deny he was at that meeting place, or that any conspiracy to abduct Mr Pearl was hatched there.
What is clear is that Pearl flew to the port city of Karachi expecting to conduct an interview, but instead he was kidnapped. His abductors demanded better treatment for detainees held by American forces at Guantanamo Bay, the return of all Pakistani men being held there, and bizarrely for a militant group, also called for the US to either deliver a consignment of fighter jets that had been promised to Pakistan but then halted, or return the money for them, plus interest. In the end, Pearl was murdered, accused, as an American Jewish man, of being a Mossad agent.
Why were they acquitted?
Following an investigation, Mr Sheikh and three other men were arrested, charged and then convicted in 2002. There seemed strong evidence that Mr Sheikh had masterminded the kidnapping, having been identified at the hotel in Rawalpindi by two separate eyewitnesses. But the prosecution case was deeply flawed. The Supreme Court decision on Thursday cleared him of any wrongdoing.
It’s widely acknowledged that Mr Sheikh first handed himself over to Pakistan’s powerful intelligence services. However, police and prosecutors attempted to gloss over that, and instead, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, claimed he had been arrested a week later, wandering around Karachi airport.
What’s more, evidence began to emerge that Mr Sheikh had not physically carried out the murder himself. Instead, it’s now thought a senior al-Qaeda operative currently in Guantanamo Bay, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (no relation), was responsible. The Pakistani authorities, however, deliberately discounted testimony suggesting that was the case.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, two former leading figures in the investigation told their frustration at how it had been handled. One said the decision to try and brush over discrepancies in the timeline, and ignore evidence suggesting Mr Sheikh was not present at the time of the murder, undermined the rest of the case, even though they believed it was clear he had orchestrated the abduction.
In April 2020, a high court in Sindh acquitted Mr Sheikh and the other three men of murder.
The ruling was condemned by media rights groups, and the men remained in detention while Daniel Pearl’s family and the Pakistani government appealed the decision.
