KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) announced its verdict today on the appeals filed by four convicts in the Daniel Pearl case, acquitting three while converting the death sentence of prime accused Ahmed Omer Saeed Sheikh’s death sentence into a seven-year jail term. Pearl, the South Asia bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal, was abducted in January 2002 in Karachi and beheaded the next month, reportedly by Al-Qaeda. Following the hearings, an anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Hyderabad had sentenced to death prime accused Ahmed Omer Saeed Sheikh, a British national and commonly known as Shaikh Omar, and life term to co-accused Fahad Naseem, Salman Saqib and Sheikh Adil for the abduction of the slain journalist. However, all four convicts had moved the SHC in 2002 challenging their convictions. Today, the SHC ruled that none of the accused have been proven as murderers of the slain journalist while Ahmed Omer Saeed was convicted of kidnapping the deceased.

Source: Pakistan Today April 02, 2020 05:15 UTC