Posted on 06/21/2002 2:15:01 PM PDT by swarthyguy
Man Accused in Wall Street Journal Reporter's Murder Says Police Fabricated Evidence
HYDERABAD, Pakistan June 21 — The chief defendant in the kidnap-slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl accused Pakistani authorities Friday of fabricating a case against him to "please America," as the trial enters its final stage.
Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, one of four defendants on trial since April 22, told a judge that police manufactured evidence, illegally detained him and tortured two of his fellow defendants.
Reporters are barred from the proceedings but defense lawyer Rai Bashir briefed them and provided a six-page written summary of the remarks.
Under Pakistani procedures, defendants are permitted to make a statement to the trial judge once the prosecution has rested its case. The prosecution and defense have said the trial may end as early as next week, although the verdict could take weeks.
Saeed was the only defendant to make a statement Friday.
In his statement, Saeed contested the state's claim that he was arrested on Feb. 12. The British-born former student at the London School of Economics said he was actually detained a week earlier and held secretly so that police would have time to manufacture evidence against him.
"All this kind of evidence has been fabricated against me in order to please America and to show loyalty and so-called efficiency to the Americans," Saeed said. "The entire case is a tissue of lies. All the witnesses are police officers, police spies or police touts and agents despite their outward calling."
Saeed said he would call his father, a chartered accountant in London, and his uncle, a Pakistani district court judge, as character witnesses and to testify that he was not even in Karachi when the kidnapping occurred.
Saeed refused to speak under oath, saying he had no respect for courts modeled on the British judicial system rather than on Islamic law.
Pearl disappeared on the night of Jan. 23 after leaving for an appointment with an Islamic militant contact at a popular Karachi restaurant.
A few days later, e-mails were received by news organizations announcing his kidnapping by an unknown group, the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, which demanded among other things better treatment for Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners held by the Americans in Cuba.
A videotape was received by the U.S. Consulate in Karachi in February confirming Pearl's death. The tape surfaced after Saeed was in custody.
Saeed's statement about his arrest could become embarrassing for the prosecution because the circumstances of his capture have never been clear. Police announced his arrest in Lahore one day before President Pervez Musharraf was to meet President Bush in Washington. The kidnapping had deeply embarrassed the Musharraf government.
However, diplomatic sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Saeed had been in the custody of Pakistani intelligence for several days before the announcement. It was unclear why the intelligence service never acknowledged it was holding Saeed, but the sources speculated that agents were urging him to lead them to Pearl.
The government's case rests heavily on technical evidence developed by the FBI, which traced the e-mails to fellow defendant Fahad Naseem. Police raided Naseem's apartment in Karachi and found the e-mails on his laptop's hard disk.
According to police, Naseem said he sent the e-mails on instructions of Saeed, who told him before the kidnapping that he planned to seize someone who was "anti-Islam and a Jew."
On the first day of the trial, taxi driver Nasir Abbas testified he saw Pearl get into a car with Saeed in front of the restaurant on the night he vanished.
At a hearing in Karachi two days after his arrest, Saeed admitted involvement in the abduction and said he believed Pearl was dead. However, the statement was not made under oath and he recanted it. He claimed in his statement Friday that Naseem had been tortured into implicating him.
The remains of a body believed to be Pearl's was recovered from a shallow grave in Karachi last month near a blood-splattered shed where police believe he was held before being killed. DNA results are pending.
Hard to understand what this statement means. Guess we'll find out next week.
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