Free Republic

The reporter who comes to Karachi, Pakistan is given certain cautions. Do not take a taxi from the airport; arrange for the hotel to send a car and confirm the driver's identity before getting in. Do not stay in a room that faces the street. Do not interview sources over the phone. Do not discuss subjects such as Islam or the Pakistani nuclear program in the presence of hotel staff. Do not leave notes or tape recordings in your room. Do not discard work papers in the waste basket; flush them down the toilet. Do not use public transportation or...

The murder conviction of a British Pakistani man found guilty of the 2002 kidnapping and killing of journalist Daniel Pearl was overturned by a court in Pakistan on Thursday. The sentence of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was reduced to seven years in prison for the charge of kidnapping. His lawyer, Khwaja Naveed, says it was expected those years would count as time served. Saeed had spent 18 years in prison in southern Hyderabad on death row. The court also acquitted three others -- Fahad Naseem, Sheikh Adil, and Salman Saqib -- who were accused in the case and had been...

There in my Canadian newspaper was a photograph of an ordinary house in an ordinary street in ordinary working-class Walthamstow in northeast London. But the bland veneer was shattered by the presence of armed police officers. For this was the home of an alleged terrorist who, it is claimed, wanted to murder thousands of innocent people by blowing up airliners over the Atlantic and give his life in international jihad. No longer ordinary, particularly for me. Because Walthamstow is where I was born, just yards away from where this terror suspect lived. He too was born in Britain, just as...

Islamic militant Ahmed Saeed Omar Sheikh, who was indicted Thursday in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl, could face the death penalty if convicted. "If Saeed is found guilty of the crimes he is charged with committing against Daniel Pearl, he could receive the death penalty," Ashcroft said. A New Jersey federal grand jury charged the British-born militant with one count of hostage taking and one count of conspiring to take hostages resulting in Pearl's death. In addition, he faces charges in Pakistan, but there's no word yet on when he would be placed in...