Taxi driver last saw Pearl with Sheikh, SC told

The counsel for the Sindh government on Thursday informed the Supreme Court that one of the witnesses, a taxi driver, had last seen slain American journalist Daniel Pearl with the main accused in his murder case, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh.

A three-member special bench of the apex court headed by Justice Mushir Alam and comprising Justice Sardar Tariq Masood and Justice Yahya Afridi was hearing the petitions filed by the Sindh government and Pearl's parents challenging the acquittal of the men earlier sentenced for murdering the journalist.

On April 2, the Sindh High Court had commuted the death sentence of British-born Sheikh, convicted for kidnapping and murdering US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 to seven years. It also acquitted three others who were serving life terms in the case, almost two decades after they were found guilty by a trial court.

The Sindh government as well as Pearl’s family later moved the top court against the verdict.

During the course of proceedings, Sindh government’s lawyer Farooq H Naek while continuing his arguments read the statements of taxi drivers Nasir Abbas and Hayat Ali Khan. He also read the statement of Police Officer Jameel Yousaf.

“This is not a case in which a body and a murder weapon had been found as it was a blind murder,” he pointed out.

The lawyer said the events had to be linked to reach a conclusion in this case. The last witness in this case was a taxi driver.

“The last time the taxi driver saw Daniel Pearl, he was with Ahmed Omar Sheikh.”

Naek contended that linking the chain of events proved that Sheikh had murdered the journalist. The hearing was later adjourned till Tuesday.

A day earlier, Naek read out the statement of a journalist, Asif Mehmood Farooqi, another persecution witness who at the time of the crime was associated with a Japanese news agency and who had arranged a meeting between Pearl and Sheikh.

In the statement, Farooqi had said he did not know whether or not Daniel Pearl was working for US spy agency CIA or Israeli spy agency Mossad. He also did not know whether Pearl had come to Pakistan to gather information with regard to Dawood Ibrahim, the kingpin of Indian underworld.

Justice Tariq observed that if the meeting that took place in Rawalpindi was a conspiracy, then Asif Mehmood Farooqi should also have been nominated as an accused. Naek said Sheikh had introduced himself to Farooqi as a Muhammad Bashir and the journalist was unaware about his true identity.

Pearl was South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal when he was abducted in Karachi in January 2002 while researching a story about militants. A graphic video showing his decapitation was delivered to the US consulate nearly a month later.