Supreme Courtroom says Ahmed Omar Sheikh ought to be launched from jail and stored in a ‘relaxation home’, pending ongoing appeals.
Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan’s Supreme Courtroom has ordered the discharge from jail of a British-Pakistani man accused of masterminding the kidnapping and beheading of Wall Road Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl in 2002.
At a listening to within the capital Islamabad on Tuesday, the court docket ordered that Ahmed Omar Sheikh be moved from demise row to a government-run “relaxation home”, the place he’s to be stored beneath a type of home arrest.
“He ought to be moved to a cushty residential setting, one thing like a relaxation home, the place he can stay a standard life,” decide Omar Ata Bandial mentioned, listening to a petition through which Sheikh had challenged his detention after having been acquitted by the Sindh Excessive Courtroom final 12 months.
Native media reported that Sheikh’s household will probably be allowed to go to him for 9 hours a day, however he is not going to be allowed entry to a cell phone or the web. The precise phrases of Sheikh’s confinement, if any, will probably be made clear as soon as the court docket points formal orders.
Tuesday’s determination got here after the Pakistani authorities appealed the court docket’s determination final week to order the discharge of Sheikh from custody after he was acquitted of Pearl’s homicide by the Sindh Excessive Courtroom final 12 months.
The Supreme Courtroom upheld that acquittal on Thursday in a two-to-one verdict, ruling that there was inadequate proof to convict Sheikh for homicide. The highest court docket, nonetheless, did uphold the kidnapping cost.
Hearings within the authorities’s evaluation petition towards that Supreme Courtroom acquittal are persevering with, though no date for the following listening to has but been set.
Pearl’s kidnapping
Sheikh, together with three others, was accused of kidnapping Pearl, who was reporting a narrative on armed spiritual extremist teams within the southern Pakistani metropolis of Karachi in January 2002, months after the 9/11 assaults and the US-led invasion of Pakistan’s northwestern neighbour, Afghanistan.
Pearl went lacking after leaving his resort for a gathering he was instructed was with the chief of an armed group.
Days later, his kidnappers launched photos of him alongside an inventory of calls for from the US that included the releasing of Pakistani residents held throughout the US’s so-called “struggle on terror”.
Lower than a month later, a video was launched displaying Pearl being beheaded. Sheikh and his alleged accomplices had been arrested weeks earlier. Pearl’s physique was discovered by authorities in Could that 12 months
Sheikh, who was arrested in 2002 and convicted later that 12 months, has already served his seven-year sentence on the kidnapping cost. The three different accused have been acquitted on all prices and ordered to be launched as nicely.
The US termed the Supreme Courtroom verdict final week “an affront to terrorism victims in all places, together with in Pakistan”.
“The USA is deeply involved by the Pakistani Supreme Courtroom’s determination to acquit these concerned in Daniel Pearl’s kidnapping and homicide and any proposed motion to launch them,” mentioned US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in an announcement launched shortly after the acquittal.
Requires accountability
Blinken repeated the demand for accountability throughout a name with Pakistani Overseas Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Friday.
Sheikh was indicted within the US in 2002 for hostage-taking and conspiracy to commit hostage-taking which resulted within the homicide of Pearl, in addition to for the 1994 kidnapping of one other US citizen in India.
Following his acquittal, the US Justice Division mentioned it was able to take custody of Sheikh and check out him.
“Whereas we stay grateful for the Pakistani authorities’s opposition to those acquittals on enchantment, in gentle of the Supreme Courtroom’s determination, the Division of Justice reiterates that the USA stands able to take custody of Sheikh to face trial right here on the pending prices towards him,” mentioned Performing Lawyer Normal Monty Wilkinson.
Asad Hashim is Al Jazeera’s digital correspondent in Pakistan. He tweets @AsadHashim.