KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Wednesday heard the appeal of convicts in American journalist Daniel Pearl’s murder case. A division bench of the high court headed by Chief Justice Ahmed Ali Sheikh heard the appeals of the convicts including Omar Saeed Sheikh, Fahad Naseem and Salman Saqib.
When the appeal came up for hearing before the division bench, the counsels of the convicts did not appear before the court once again. Upon this, the bench issued directives to for issuing notices to the counsel for appearance before the court. It is to be mentioned here that an anti-terrorism court had sentenced Omer Saeed Sheikh to death and handed down life terms to Fahad Naseem and Salman Saqib for killing the Wall Street Journal’s journalists. The convicts had challenged the sentences to them by the anti-terrorism court (ATC). Pearl, the South Asia bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped on January 23rd , 2002, from Karachi and later beheaded by his captors.
The main accused, Sheikh, was sentenced to death on the charges of kidnapping and killing the US journalist, while his three accomplices – Fahad Naseem, Syed Salman Saqib and Sheikh Muhammad Adil – were sentenced life imprisonment with a fine of Rs500,000 each by the ATC, Hyderabad on July 15, 2002. The court had also directed the convicts to pay Rs 2 million to the victim’s widow, Marianne Pearl. The state had also filed an appeal seeking enhancement of life terms into capital punishment of the three co-accused.
Published in Daily Times, August 17th 2017.
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