Posted on 12/26/2020 1:17:15 AM PST by xomething
Family, provincial government appealing acquittals to Supreme Court of Pakistan as provincial high court says there is no justifiable reason for their continued detention.
[Islamabad] A top Pakistani provincial court has ordered the immediate release of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and his three alleged co-conspirators in the brutal murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl in February 2002.
Sheikh, a British national of Pakistani origin, was sentenced to death the same year for killing Pearl, but his conviction was overturned by a Pakistani court in April. He is likely to go free on Saturday.
The Sindh High Court, located in Karachi, ruled on Thursday that “the detention orders for the prime accused, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, and three co-conspirators, Fahad Naseem, Sheikh Adil, and Salman Saqib, are null and void.”
The court also ordered that “none of the accused be placed under any preventive detention order by the federal government, provincial government, any law enforcement agency or any other body without the prior permission of the High Court.”
"The prosecution could not present concrete evidence against the accused"
The Sindh High Court, however, also ordered that the men’s names be placed on the Exit Control List, a no-fly list that prevents them from leaving the country, and that no action be taken against them without a court directive.
Karachi Central Prison sources confirmed to the Media Line that “the accused men could be released on Saturday, as December 25 will be a national holiday and Christmas as well.” December 25 is the birthday of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan.
Pearl, The Wall Street Journal’s South Asian bureau chief, had been investigating a story about the alleged financing of al-Qaida via Pakistan-based militants. Pearl disappeared in Karachi on Jan. 23, 2002, on the way to what he believed would be an interview, and was decapitated by his captors nine days later. Video of Pearl’s murder by beheading was sent to the U.S. consulate.
The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty extremist group claimed responsibility for abducting Pearl, but Pakistani security officials said the kidnappers were members of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), a banned al-Qaida affiliate.
Karachi police arrested the four men in February 2002. In June 2002, a counterterrorism court sentenced Sheikh to death by hanging. The three others were sentenced to life in prison.
An appeals court in Karachi overturned Sheikh’s murder conviction in April, ruling that he was guilty only of kidnapping Pearl. The court commuted Sheikh’s death sentence to seven years in prison and acquitted his three accomplices.
Sheikh has already spent 18 years on death row, which the court said would be counted as time served toward his seven-year sentence, paving the way for his release.
However, the Sindh Province government decided to keep the four men in preventive detention under a relevant section of the Anti-Terrorism Act, and all of them were rearrested a day after the court freed them.
According to the law, the government may order preventive detention for a period of 90 days for any person accused of terrorism, and it cannot be challenged in court. The detention orders have been renewed every three months, including most recently in October 2020.
Salman Talib Ud Deen, the Sindh advocate general, told the court on Thursday that the current preventative detention order is set to expire on Dec. 27.
The court said “it is possible that the Sindh government will once again detain the petitioners under another preventive detention order to prevent their release from jail.”
However, in announcing its decision on Thursday, the High Court observed that the “concerned authorities remain unable to produce justified reasons for the continued detention of the accused persons, who had filed an appeal against their continuous detention since their release order in April 2020.”
A senior high court official who witnessed the trial told The Media Line on condition of anonymity that “no agency, including the police, acted seriously in this high-profile case. The prosecution of the case was very weak, due to which the accused are being declared innocent.”
He added: “The prosecution could not present concrete evidence against the accused.”
The official continued that “even during the final hearing on Thursday, Justice Amjad Ali Sehto expressed displeasure over the mistakes and shortcomings in the previous detention notification, and asked the Home Department to hire some literate persons.
“The High Court judge asked the officials whether anyone had read what was written in the notification,” he said.
Oh, and there is this: PM Imran Khan meets US Senator Lindsey Graham
"Prime Minister Imran Khan will address the high-level UN summits on climate change, sustainable development, universal health coverage and financing for development," today.
The MSM will have nothing bad to say about this, if they mention it at all, because they are too busy slamming Trump for pardoning a few innocent victims of the Mueller witch hunt.
Pockystahn shielded Osama Bin Obama.
They are not our friends.
Pocky-stan is a dump.
And it was Obama’s favorite place.
I worked with some sailors who went to Karachi on a port visit in the late 70’s . Said that there were corpses in the street, not a big deal to the locals, and it was by far the nastiest place they had ever been.
SOCOM should now hunt them down and dispatch them with prejudice. Large caliber weapons and leave the mess in the streets
They’ll accept our money.
What do they do with it ?
Have we no drones?
All the more reason for us to help out the women in Pakistan with some of our money. /s
But what about their gender studies classes?
Demonstrating why executing such thugs is not only moral but necessary.
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