The Sindh High Court is yet to decide his appeal against the sentence even though the case hearing has been adjourned for over 100 times since 2002.
Sindh High Court yet to decide on Omar’s appealLAHORE: Despite being sentenced to death six years ago by an Anti Terrorism Court for the gruesome murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl, Sheikh Ahmed Omar Saeed is lucky enough to have dodged the gallows.
The Sindh High Court is yet to decide his appeal against the sentence even though the case hearing has been adjourned for over 100 times since 2002.
The 38-year-old American journalist travelled to Pakistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks to work on an investigative story about the alleged intelligence links of some Pakistani militant leaders. He was abducted from Karachi on January 23, 2002, before being beheaded by militants.
The killers of Pearl, including Sheikh Omar Saeed, a London School of Economics graduate-turned-Jihadi, and three of his accomplices — Fahad Naseem, Salman Saqib and Sheikh Adeel — were put on trial on April 22, 2002. Almost three months later, the Karachi court handed down capital punishment to Omar Saeed Sheikh while his three accomplices were sentenced to life in prison.
Currently languishing in a Hyderabad jail, the accused had instantly approached the Sindh High Court by lodging appeals against the Anti Terrorism Court verdict. But their appeals have not yet been decided for inexplicable reasons despite a lapse of 75 months and over 100 adjournments.
However, Omar Sheikh’s defence lawyer sees nothing unusual, saying that appeals in murder cases usually last for years. Rai Bashir maintains that the Pearl case had already taken a new twist. He plans to use the confession by the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khaled Sheikh Mohammad, that he was the one who had beheaded Pearl.
Rai Bashir says he would use Khaled’s testimony as evidence that his client did not kill Pearl. “What we had been saying for so many years in the appeal is that Omar was innocent and he had not committed that murder. We are happy that this version has been verified Americans after the arrest of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed,” maintained Rai.
However, contrary to his lawyer’s contention, the hard fact remains that at his initial court appearance in April 2002, Sheikh Omar had almost confessed to his crime.
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