Show caption Daniel Pearl was investigating al-Qaida in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi when he disappeared in January 2002. Photograph: Wall Street Journal/Getty Images Pakistan Daniel Pearl murder: Pakistani court overturns death sentence of accused British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh could be released from prison within days Jason Burke Thu 2 Apr 2020 10.32 EDT Share on Facebook

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A British-born Islamist militant facing execution for the 2002 kidnapping and murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl may walk free after a court in Pakistan commuted his sentence, and acquitted three co-accused.

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was convicted of masterminding Pearl’s murder, and sentenced to death in 2002. He has been in jail ever since awaiting the outcome of a series of appeals and legal arguments.

His conviction was showcased by Pakistan as proof of the country’s commitment to the US-led war against terrorism, launched after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 which killed 3,000 people in New York and Washington.

Sheikh’s role in the murder of Pearl has long been disputed. He is known to have been involved in the kidnapping of the journalist, who was investigating al-Qaida in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi when he disappeared in January 2002, but is thought not to have taken part in his killing.

The murder, which was filmed and the video posted online, may instead have been carried out by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the key organiser of the 9/11 attacks, who is being held at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.

In 2007 US officials said Mohammed, who was systematically tortured after his arrest in Pakistan in 2003, had confessed to personally killing Pearl during a military hearing at Guantánamo Bay.

Khawaja Naveed, a defence lawyer in Pakistan, told Reuters on Thursday that Sheikh would be released within days.

“The court has commuted Omar’s death sentence to a seven-year sentence. The murder charges were not proven, so he was given seven years for the kidnapping. Omar has already served 18 years, so his release orders will be issued sometime today. He will be out in a few days,” he said.

Three co-defendants, who had been serving life sentences in connection with the case, were acquitted.

However the decision by a two-member bench of the high court of Sindh province can be overturned by Pakistan’s supreme court, and senior government prosecutors said an appeal was likely.

“We will go through the court order once it is issued, we will probably file an appeal,” said Faiz Shah, the provincial prosecutor general.

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh at a court in Karachi in 2002. Photograph: Zia Mazhar/AP

The United States on Thursday criticized the Pakistani court’s decision as an “affront.”

“The overturning of the convictions for Daniel Pearl’s murder is an affront to victims of terrorism everywhere,” said Alice Wells, the top US diplomat for South Asia.

She welcomed indications that Pakistani prosecutors would appeal the decision on Sheikh.

“Those responsible for Daniel’s heinous kidnapping and murder must face the full measure of justice,” Wells wrote on Twitter.

Sheikh, who is now 46, grew up in east London and was educated at a private school where he gained a reputation for being unruly. The son of a prosperous Pakistan-born businessman, he briefly studied at the London School of Economics before dropping out to join an organisation coordinating relief efforts for Muslims during the Bosnian war.

Radicalised by his experience in the Balkans, Sheikh travelled to Pakistan where he joined an extremist group. After several months training in camps in Afghanistan, Sheikh was sent to India to kidnap tourists to secure the release of a senior militant imprisoned there.

Captured in a police raid, he was imprisoned in India but was released when extremists hijacked an Indian airlines plane in 1999, and travelled back to Pakistan.

Sheikh set a trap for Pearl in the first days of January 2002, though his exact motives are unclear. He eventually gave himself up to civilian authorities after Pearl’s death.

The Sindh high court also acquitted three others accused in the case: Fahad Naseem, Sheikh Adil, and Salman Saqib, who were earlier sentenced to life in prison. The defendants were also collectively fined $32,000 (£26,000).

According to an authoritative investigation and 100-page report researched over several years by staff and students at Georgetown University, Pakistani authorities knowingly used perjured testimony to pin the actual act of murder on Sheikh and his three co-conspirators to achieve a rapid conviction.

“While the four were involved in the kidnapping plan and certainly were culpable, they were not present when Pearl was murdered. Others, who were present and actually assisted in the brutal beheading, were not charged,” the report concluded.

The kidnapping and eventual execution of Pearl involved three sets of militants, the investigators found. One, led by Sheikh, to abduct the journalist; a second which kept him prisoner in a home on the outskirts of Karachi and a third, comprising senior figures in al-Qaida, which killed him.

The decision to murder Pearl was taken by Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian militant who was very influential within al-Qaida but virtually unknown at the time. Adel is now regarded as one of its most effective operators. Some officials believe the former special forces officer was sent to Syria in around 2015.

The Georgetown investigation revealed that US investigators had found that the pattern of the veins in the hand seen beheading Pearl in the video of his murder closely resembled those seen in images of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s hands. The investigators concluded that the al-Qaida extremist had killed the journalist.

The report also found that most of those involved in the crime had escaped justice. Several were killed in clashes with Pakistani security agencies, and one was shot dead by four unidentified men on motorbikes in 2009. Several of the guards who kept Pearl imprisoned, including one who held him down during his execution, have never been fully investigated by Pakistani authorities.

Others have served short prison sentences for other crimes but have never been charged for their roles in Pearl’s murder.

Authorities in Pakistan were embarrassed both by Sheikh’s involvement with a series of Pakistan-based extremist groups prior to the kidnapping of Pearl, and the extensive role of such organisations in the detention and murder of the journalist. Many Islamist extremist factions in Pakistan have received extensive support from the country’s security services over decades.