Pakistani Court Overturns Convictions in Murder of Journalist

Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl was in Karachi researching a possible lead when he disappeared. (Flickr)

A Pakistani court overturned convictions in the 2002 murder of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl on April 2, according to AP.

One of the men formerly convicted in the case, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, is a British national, NPR reports. Having overturned Saeed’s terrorism and murder convictions, the Sindh High Court in Karachi proceeded to find Saeed guilty of the single charge of kidnapping Pearl, downgrading Saeed’s sentence to seven years in prison. Saeed had previously been facing the death sentence.

Saeed has already been in prison for 18 years. One of Saeed’s lawyers, Khwaja Naveed, expects that this could be counted as time served. As such, according to Naveed, Saeed is expected to go free if the Pakistani government does not dispute the court decision.

The Sindh High Court also acquitted three other individuals formerly convicted of Pearl’s murder, according to the New York Times.

A journalist for the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Pearl had been in Karachi researching possible connections between Pakistani militants and a bomber when he disappeared on January 23, 2002.

The bomber had been arrested on a flight from Paris to Miami on December 22, 2001 because his shoes were filled with explosives.

According to AP, prosecutors in the case said that Saeed led Pearl into a trap by promising to provide him an interview with an Islamic cleric whom the police believed was uninvolved with Pearl’s kidnapping.

A video of Pearl’s beheading was emailed to the U.S. Consulate in Karachi.

Saeed was a British citizen and at the time of Pearl’s kidnapping, was training in Pakistan and Afghanistan with militant group Jaish-e-Muhammad.

According to the New York Times, Georgetown University’s journalism program published a report in 2011 that cast doubt on the murder convictions of Saeed and his three companions.

The group of faculty and students that conducted the investigation, which was known as the Pearl Project, concluded that the four individuals orchestrated Pearl’s abduction but were uninvolved in his murder. U.S. authorities point toward the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, as the person directly responsible for Pearl’s beheading.

Regardless, Faiz Shah, the prosecutor general in Pakistan’s Sindh province, said that the government will take the court’s controversial decision to the Pakistani Supreme Court. Pearl’s father, Judea Pearl, described the verdict as a “mockery of justice.”

In a statement, the Committee to Protect Journalists said, “We are deeply disappointed to see justice in the murder case of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl denied by a Pakistani court today. We urge prosecutors to appeal the decision.”