HYDERABAD:
An anti-terrorism court (ATC) has acquitted a co-accused in the 2002 murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl due to a lack of evidence, lawyers said on Friday.
Qari Hashim was arrested in 2005, three years after the main accused were convicted for the abduction and beheading of Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter.
The prosecution had no “valid witness in proving the role of my client in the Pearl case,” defence lawyer Sher Muhammad Leghari told AFP.
Public prosecutor Nasir Durrani also said that ATC Judge Abdul Ghafoor Memon acquitted the suspect on Thursday due to insufficient evidence.
Pearl, 38, was the South Asia bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal when he was abducted and beheaded in Karachi in 2002, while researching a story about militants. A graphic video showing Pearl’s decapitation was delivered to the US consulate in the city nearly a month later.
Subsequently, British-born Omar Sheikh was arrested and sentenced to death by an ATC, while three other co-accused received life imprisonment.
Sheikh and his accomplices – Salman Saqib, Fahad Naseem and Shaikh Adil – filed an appeal in Sindh High Court, challenging the verdict. The cases are still pending in the court.
Hashim was accused of introducing Pearl to Omar in the course of his journalistic research.
He has remained imprisoned in the Central Jail Hyderabad since his arrest. According to his counsel advocate Laghari, the suspect filed an application in the ATC four months ago under Section 265-k to seek his acquittal. In February this year, Omar Sheikh allegedly attempted suicide in his prison cell by hanging himself with a cloth from the ventilator. The then deputy jail superintendent Majid Akhtar had told The Express Tribune that the prison staff thwarted his attempt.
In January 2011, a report released by the Pearl Project at Georgetown University following an investigation into his death made chilling revelations when it claimed that the wrong men were convicted for Pearl’s murder.
The investigation, led by Pearl’s friend and former Wall Street Journal colleague Asra Nomani and a Georgetown University professor, claimed the reporter was murdered by Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the alleged brains behind the September 11, 2001 attacks, not Omar Sheikh.
Self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and is being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, awaiting trial by a US military tribunal.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 25th, 2014.
COMMENTS (1)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ
Did somebody say that the US was raising funds for the Daimer-Bhasha dam?