A BRITISH jihadi sentenced to demise for the beheading of US journalist Daniel Pearl has been freed by a court docket in Pakistan.
Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh’s acquittal by the Supreme Courtroom comes months after a judges induced outrage by overturning the conviction and demise sentence.
Sheikh, from Wanstead in East London, was considered one of 4 fanatics who have been convicted of murdering Mr Pearl, who was kidnapped and butchered in Karachi in 2002.
Earlier this 12 months Sindh Excessive Courtroom quashed Sheikh’s demise sentence for homicide – as an alternative giving him seven years’ jail for kidnapping – and acquitted the opposite three males.
However December one other court docket in Sindh decreed that every one 4 must be launched.
The 4 have been held underneath emergency orders of the native authorities pending an ongoing enchantment in opposition to the acquittals in Pakistan’s Supreme Courtroom by the Pearl household.
The Supreme Courtroom has now rejected that enchantment by 2-1 majority.
Sheikh and his co-accused are to be launched instantly if they don’t seem to be required in another case, the pinnacle of the court docket panel, Justice Mushir Alam, mentioned in a court docket order.
The Pearl household’s lawyer, Faisal Siddiq mentioned they have been in “full shock by the choice”.
“No quantity of injustice will defeat our resolve to battle for justice for Daniel Pearl,” he mentioned.
‘COMPLETE SHOCK’
However specialists imagine the case in opposition to Sheikh had been flawed from its early phases and the Supreme Courtroom had doubtless made its choice on authorized procedural points.
Mr Pearl, 38, was the Wall Road Journal’s South Asia bureau chief, primarily based in Mumbai, India.
He was in Pakistan investigating Islamist terrorism and between al-Qaeda and British jihadi Richard Reid, who tried to explode a Miami-bound flight with explosives in his footwear.
A graphic video displaying his decapitation was delivered to the US consulate almost a month after the journalist was kidnapped.
Sheikh, who as soon as studied on the London College of Economics, was a seasoned jihadist who had been concerned in earlier kidnappings of foreigners in Pakistan.
He was arrested days after Mr Pearl’s abduction and later sentenced to demise by hanging.
In January 2011, a report launched by the Pearl Mission at Georgetown College made chilling revelations, claiming that the fallacious males have been convicted for Pearl’s homicide.
The investigation was led by Pearl’s pal and former Wall Road Journal colleague Asra Nomani and a Georgetown College professor.
They claimed the actual killer was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the assaults on New York and Washingon on September 11, 2001.