A Pakistani court has commuted the death penalty to the main person convicted of the kidnapping and brutal murder of the American journalist Daniel Pearl in January 2002 , and acquitted three others implicated in the case, defenses to news agencies reported on Thursday. . Ahmed Omer Saeed Sheikh, considered the mastermind of that crime, was arrested and sentenced to death the same year and has remained in jail since then pending his appeal.
Sheikh's death sentence has been commuted to seven years in prison, which he has already served, and his release, as well as that of his cronies, Fahad Naseem, Salman Saqib and Sheikh Adil, are sentenced to life in prison. The Prosecutor's appeal to increase the sentence to these last three has been dismissed.
The Sindh High Court, presided over by Judge Mohammad Karim Khan Agha, has accepted the thesis of lawyers Rai Bashir and Khawaja Naveed that the prosecution did not prove beyond reasonable doubt the involvement of their clients and that witnesses in their Against were mostly policemen, whose testimonies are not reliable. In addition, they defended that the confessions of Naseem and Adil before a magistrate were not voluntary.
Pearl, who was 38 and correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped in Karachi, the capital of the Pakistani province of Sindh , while investigating Islamic extremists in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in the United States. Just a month later, a video delivered to the American Consulate in that city showed how his throat was cut.
Sheikh, born in the United Kingdom and who had studied at the London School of Economics, had previously been arrested in India for his involvement in the kidnapping of western tourists in 1994. However, after the hijacking of an Indian plane in 1999 was one of three released in exchange for the hostages and flew to Afghanistan, whose Taliban regime mediated in the swap.
https://elpais.com/internacional/2020-04-02/pakistan-conmuta-la-pena-de-muerte-de-un-condenado-por-el-asesinato-del-periodista-daniel-pearl-y-absuelve-a-otros-tres.html
A Pakistani court has commuted the death penalty to the main person convicted of the kidnapping and brutal murder of the American journalist Daniel Pearl in January 2002 , and acquitted three others implicated in the case, defenses to news agencies reported on Thursday. . Ahmed Omer Saeed Sheikh, considered the mastermind of that crime, was arrested and sentenced to death the same year and has remained in jail since then pending his appeal.
Sheikh's death sentence has been commuted to seven years in prison, which he has already served, and his release, as well as that of his cronies, Fahad Naseem, Salman Saqib and Sheikh Adil, are sentenced to life in prison. The Prosecutor's appeal to increase the sentence to these last three has been dismissed.
The Sindh High Court, presided over by Judge Mohammad Karim Khan Agha, has accepted the thesis of lawyers Rai Bashir and Khawaja Naveed that the prosecution did not prove beyond reasonable doubt the involvement of their clients and that witnesses in their Against were mostly policemen, whose testimonies are not reliable. In addition, they defended that the confessions of Naseem and Adil before a magistrate were not voluntary.
Pearl, who was 38 and correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped in Karachi, the capital of the Pakistani province of Sindh , while investigating Islamic extremists in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in the United States. Just a month later, a video delivered to the American Consulate in that city showed how his throat was cut.
Sheikh, born in the United Kingdom and who had studied at the London School of Economics, had previously been arrested in India for his involvement in the kidnapping of western tourists in 1994. However, after the hijacking of an Indian plane in 1999 was one of three released in exchange for the hostages and flew to Afghanistan, whose Taliban regime mediated in the swap.
https://elpais.com/internacional/2020-04-02/pakistan-conmuta-la-pena-de-muerte-de-un-condenado-por-el-asesinato-del-periodista-daniel-pearl-y-absuelve-a-otros-tres.html
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