Pakistan SC orders Al-Qaeda terrorist let off in Daniel Pearl murder be sent to safe house

Pakistan's Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered British-born al-Qaeda leader & terrorist Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh acquitted of the 2002 gruesome beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl off death row and moved to a so-called government "safe house."

Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, who has been on death row for 18 years will be under guard and won't be allowed to leave the safe house, but he will be able to have his wife and children visit him, the Associated Press reported. "It is not complete freedom. It is a step toward freedom," said Sheikh's father, Saeed Sheikh, who attended the hearing.

International pressure mounting on Pakistan

The Pakistan government has been scrambling to keep Sheikh in jail since a Supreme Court order last Thursday upheld his acquittal in the death of Pearl generating expressions of outrage by Pearl's family and the U.S. administration.

In a final effort to overturn Sheikh's acquittal, Pakistan government, as well as the Pearl family, have filed an appeal to the Supreme Court to review the decision to exonerate the terrorist of Pearl's murder. The Pearl family lawyer, Faisal Sheikh, earlier said a review has a slim chance of success because the same Supreme Court judges who ordered Sheikh's acquittal sit on the review panel.

The Pakistan Supreme Court on Monday rejected the Sindh government's request to suspend the order to release Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and his three aides in the brutal murder of Daniel Pearl, days after it announced to formally join the review proceedings against the acquittal of the accused amid mounting international pressure. The court, however, extended the interim detention order of main accused Sheikh and his aides - Fahad Naseem, Sheikh Adil and Salman Saqib- by one day to hear the government's position on the case.

Pearl, the then 38-year-old South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, was abducted and beheaded while he was in Pakistan investigating a story in 2002 on the links between the country's powerful spy agency ISI and al-Qaeda.

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Pakistan declines to handover Sheikh to the US

Meanwhile, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Sunday said that Pakistan will not hand over the main accused in the case to the US, The Express Tribune report said on Sunday. His comments came after a phone call with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken who offered to prosecute Sheikh in America. Blinken also expressed "deep concern" over the apex court's judgement. 

In April 2020, a two-judge Sindh High Court bench commuted the death sentence of 46-year-old Sheikh to seven years imprisonment. The court also acquitted his three aides who were serving life terms in the case -- almost two decades after they were found guilty and jailed.

Pearl's murder took place three years after Sheikh, along with Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, was released by India in 1999 and given safe passage to Afghanistan in exchange for the nearly 150 passengers of hijacked Indian Airlines Flight 814. He was serving a prison term in India for kidnappings of Western tourists in the country.

READ | Sindh govt halts release of Omar Sheikh, 3 others in Daniel Pearl murder case

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(With agency inputs)