The authorities ordered on Friday four men, including a British national convicted of the 2002 murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl, to be detained for three months despite a lower court’s ruling to overturn their convictions.
The Sindh High Court had on Thursday acquitted the four, including Briton Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was sentenced to death in 2002 for masterminding Pearl’s murder. The other three were sentenced to life.
Wall Street Journal reporter Pearl, 38, was investigating militants in the city of Karachi after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on the United States when he was kidnapped in January 2002. He was beheaded weeks later.
The Sindh Home Department issued the order to arrest and detain the four before they were released from prison. “The government of Sindh has sufficient reason that Ahmed Omar Sheikh and Fahad Nasim Ahmed, Syed Salman Saqib, Sheikh Muhammad Adil be arrested and detained for a period of three months from the date of arrest (April 2, 2020),” a notification issued by the department said, adding that the released men may act ‘against the interest of the country’.
The Sindh government invoked the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) law to keep the four men in detention for another 90 days. The orders were issued under Section 3 of the MPO.
“We are surprised at the timing of the verdict … the order shall be challenged at a higher forum,” Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said, adding that Pakistan has sacrificed a lot in the fight against terrorism.
The United States has also expressed concern on the acquittal of all four suspects from terrorism charges, terming the development an insult to victims of terrorism everywhere. In a statement, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Alice G Wells said, “We welcome Pakistan’s decision to appeal the verdict. Those responsible for Daniel’s heinous kidnapping and murder must face the full measure of justice.”
Sheikh was born in Britain and enjoyed a privileged upbringing and studied at the London School of Economics. He was arrested in India for his involvement in the kidnapping of Western tourists in 1994 as part of his support for freedom fighters battling Indian occupation in the disputed Kashmir region. He was one of three men released from an Indian prison after militants hijacked an Indian airliner in late 1999 and flew it to Afghanistan, where the then-ruling Taliban government helped negotiate an exchange.
