On This Day: American journalist Daniel Pearl murdered in Pakistan

On February 1, 2002, American journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and beheaded while he was working on a story about extremist groups in Pakistan.

Who was Daniel Pearl?

Born in New Jersey, United States (US), Daniel Pearl, aged 38, was an American journalist who worked as the South Asia Bureau Chief of The Wall Street Journal.

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Pearl visited Pakistan as part of an ongoing investigation into the alleged links between Richard Reid the 'Shoe Bomber' and al Qaeda, in 2002. He was subsequently kidnapped by militants and later beheaded.

According to sources, on January 23, 2002, Pearl was kidnapped in Karachi by a militant group while he was on his way to an interview with Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, the founder of The Muslims of America. Sources also tell the militant group claimed Pearl was a spy.

The prosecution alleged British-born militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was involved in Pearl's murder. Sheikh was accused of kidnapping Pearl in Karachi in January 2002. Sources tell Sheikh met Pearl at a hotel in Rawalpindi in January 2002. Police said Sheikh had used a fake name and pretended to be a follower of a hard-line cleric Pearl wanted to interview. Sheikh's lawyers deny he was at that meeting place, or that any conspiracy to abduct Pearl was hatched there.

What happened?

The Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl went missing on January 23 in Karachi and on February 22 he was declared dead after authorities received a horrific videotape containing visuals of him being brutally murdered.

According to BBC, haunting pictures of Pearl in chains with a gun to his head were initially released. Following which, the journalist was beheaded on videotape.

Who was Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh?

Son of a cloth merchant, Omar Saeed Sheikh was born in England in 1974, where he attended a private school. His family moved to Lahore in 1987 and he enrolled at the renowned Aitchison College, from where he was expelled for rowdy behaviour.

He returned to the United Kingdom and joined the Forest School in Snaresbrook, according to a report by the BBC. Sheikh was admitted to the London School of Economics in 1992 but was drawn into militant circles.

According to sources, Sheikh was deeply moved by the conflict in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the relentless attacks on Muslims in Bosnia at the time. Muslims' treatment in Bosnian Serb camps was what Sheikh saw as Western indifference to the plight of Muslims.

"He told us he was going to Bosnia driving aid convoys, and he never came back to university," The Guardian quoted journalist Syed Ali Hasan, who was with Sheikh at Forest School and LSE, as saying. Hasan described Sheikh as "bright but rather dysfunctional".

In 1994, Sheikh was imprisoned in India after allegedly kidnapping several 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 to be released in exchange for the passengers. Sheikh also travelled to Indian-occupied Kashmir to wage war against India in the Muslim-majority region.

Sheikh was arrested by Pakistan's law enforcement agencies in 2002 for his involvement in Pearl's kidnapping and murder. The Guardian reported that a photograph of Pearl, bound in chains, was traced to Sheikh and while the latter was in the custody of the authorities, a video of Pearl's barbaric decapacitation was sent to the US embassy in Karachi.

In 2019, Sheikh wrote a letter to Pakistan's Supreme Court in which he admitted to being involved in the killing of Pearl. In the letter, dated July 25, 2019, and stamped with the seal of the High Court of Sindh, Sheikh asks that he be given an opportunity to “clarify my actual role in this matter so that my sentence may be reduced accordingly to one which is consistent with the requirement of justice.”

However, Sheikh’s lawyer, Mehmood A. Sheikh, insisted that his client wrote the letter under duress and that he did not have any connection to Pearl. The lawyer also added that his client described the conditions in his prison as “worse than the life of an animal” and wrote the letter in an attempt to get a hearing — not make an admission of guilt. “He wanted to be able to be heard,” the lawyer said.

The follow-up:

On Thursday, January 28, 2021, Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered the release of British-born militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was convicted for the abduction and murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002. The court dismissed all charges against Sheikh who had already spent 18 months in prison for the crime.

Earlier in December, the Sindh High Court (SHC) in its order said that Sheikh and his three aides – Fahad Naseem, Salman Saqib and Sheikh Adil – who were convicted and sentenced in the case, should not be kept under “any sort of detention” and declared all notifications of the Sindh government related to their detention “null and void”. It also described the four men’s detention as “illegal”.

Earlier on April 2, 2020, the SHC overturned Sheikh's conviction for Pearl's murder but maintained his conviction on a lesser charge of abetting the kidnapping, for which he was sentenced to seven years in prison.

After a strong reaction by the United States to the apex court’s decision to acquit all those accused of kidnapping and killing Wall Street Journal’s former bureau chief, the state functionaries have intensified their efforts in a “damage control” move.

Attorney General for Pakistan (AGP) Khalid Javed Khan has issued a statement – the second since Thursday – stating that the federal government has decided to formally join review proceedings initiated by the Sindh government against the Supreme Court’s January 28 verdict.

Pakistan’s relation with the US at a crossroads

When Joe Biden took oath as the 46th President of the United States, Pakistan was hoping for a new beginning in relations - often marred by mistrust and divergent interests - with the new administration at the White House.

Before Friday’s formal contact with the Biden administration, the government finalised a strategy to look for a reset in the relationship. On top of the agenda was to seek economic partnership with the United States instead of ties only confined to the security issues and Afghanistan.

But the plans appear to have been derailed after the Supreme Court’s verdict acquitting Ahmed Omar Shaikh and three other co-accused in the Daniel Pearl murder case.

On Friday, when US Secretary of State Antony J Blinken telephoned Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, the Daniel Pearl murder case consumed most of the time during their maiden conversation, according to the readout of the State Department.

"In addition, the secretary and the foreign minister discussed the importance of a continued US-Pakistan cooperation on the Afghan peace process, support for regional stability, and the potential to expand our trade and commercial ties," the State Department statement concluded.

“The US readout mentions the Pearl case first. The Pakistan readout mentions it close to the end of the conversation part. Not to overstate the importance of sequencing, but yet another example of the disconnect in this relationship," Michael Kugelman, South Asian expert at The Wilson Centre, tweeted.

The US Embassy in Islamabad also tweeted earlier today, "We will not forget #DanielPearl​. On this day in 2002, American Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was murdered by terrorists while pursuing a story in Pakistan. Today, we remember his legacy as we continue to speak out against extremism."