Sindh govt moves SC in Daniel murder case
Karachi/Islamabad, April 23
Pakistan’s Sindh government has challenged in the Supreme Court the provincial high court’s verdict that acquitted British-born top al-Qaeda leader Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and three others in the abduction and murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl in Karachi in 2002.
Pearl, the 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 alleged links between the ISI and al-Qaeda.
The government of southern province of Sindh on Wednesday filed the challenge before the Supreme Court against the April 2 order of the Sindh High Court.
The high court exonerated the conviction of Sheikh for killing Pearl. It acquitted three accused — Fahad Naseem, Sheikh Adil and Salman Saqib, who had been sentenced to life by an Anti-Terrorism Court of Karachi.
Sindh Prosecutor General Fiaz Shah moved the appeal before the top court on the grounds that the ‘last seen evidence’, ‘impersonation’ and ‘identification parade’ was proved against the accused and maintained concurrently by the trial court.
The collective proof along with the clear and categorical confessional statements of the accused, the acquittal and modification of sentence by the high court was not sustainable and was liable to be set aside, the appeal urged the Supreme Court. — PTI
