Murderer of Daniel Pearl may be set free in Pakistan after court ruling overturns conviction
Reporters Without Borders: Pakistani court ruling is “incoherent” and a “shocking denial of justice.” … “It recognizes Sheikh’s guilt while in effect overturning his conviction.”
On February 1, 2002, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was executed after having been kidnapped in Pakistan.
On February 1, 2017, I wrote Daniel Pearl was murdered 15 years ago today:
In my memory, there are certain place markers in the history of terrorism that led to where we are today.
The 1972 Munich Massacre of Israeli athletes (1972); the bombing of the Beirut Marine Barracks (1983), the World Trade Center attacks (1993 and 2001); the Jerusalem Sbarro Pizza bombing (2001) and the videotaped beheading of Daniel Pearl, February 1, 2002.
I don’t diminish the significance and horror of other attacks, it’s just that these are memory reference points for me.
The details of the murder were particularly horrific, one of the first ‘made-for-video’ snuff films. As noted in my prior post, this article from The Telegraph in May 2004 relates some of the basic details, Daniel Pearl ‘refused to be sedated before his throat was cut’. You can read the details there.
Pearl’s last words are among the most memorable:
What became known only in the months and years following his gruesome execution was that Pearl’s kidnappers, a local group led by Omar Saeed Sheikh, had turned him over to Al-Qaida, specifically to 9/11 mastermind Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, who in the course of 183 waterboarding torture sessions at Guantanamo confessed to having slit Pearl’s throat.
In a video released on February 21, 2002 and titled “The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl,” Pearl addresses the camera in the moments before his death: “My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish,” he said, adding: “Back in the town of Bnei Brak, there is a street named after my great-grandfather Chaim Pearl, who is one of the founders of the town.” He remained proud and defiant to the end.
One of the murderers, Omar Saeed Sheikh, is about to be set free. The Wall Street Journal reports:
A Pakistani court overturned the 18-year-old murder conviction of a British national for killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and reduced his death sentence to seven years for kidnapping….
The Karachi court, which heard Mr. Sheikh’s appeal last month, overturned convictions for murder and terrorism, the 40-page ruling said Thursday. The third conviction, kidnapping for ransom, was downgraded to simple kidnapping, and Mr. Sheikh’s sentence was reduced to seven years. He has been imprisoned since 2002.
The court found discrepancies in much of the evidence used to convict Mr. Sheikh and others, including questions over who owned a computer from which ransom emails were supposed to have been sent and the circumstances of Mr. Sheikh’s arrest. The court also said it didn’t find any evidence linking Mr. Sheikh or the others to the actual murder.
“There are many missing links in the chain of evidence from the abduction of Pearl to his ultimate murder,” the court ruled.
Three accomplices who were sentenced to life in prison at the same 2002 trial had their convictions completely overturned Thursday.
Faiz Shah, the state prosecutor based in Karachi, told the Journal that an appeal would be filed to the Supreme Court. The authorities will also request a stay order from the Supreme Court that would prevent Mr. Sheikh being freed from jail until that appeal is heard, according to Mr. Shah….
Reporters Without Borders, an international watchdog group for journalists, called the decision “incoherent” and a “shocking denial of justice.”
“It recognizes Sheikh’s guilt while in effect overturning his conviction,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of the group’s Asia division.
Pearl’s father, Judea Pearl, a UCLA professor, tweeted:
It is a mockery of justice. Anyone with a minimal sense of right and wrong now expects Faiz Shah, prosecutor general of Sindh to do his duty and appeal this reprehensible decision to the Supreme Court of Pakistan
It is a mockery of justice. Anyone with a minimal sense of right and wrong now expects Faiz Shah, prosecutor general of Sindh to do his duty and appeal this reprehensible decision to the Supreme Court of Pakistan. https://t.co/he8ZXrYAks
— Judea Pearl (@yudapearl) April 2, 2020
Pakistan hasn’t changed.
If you read one thing today, read this thread from @thomasjoscelyn on Pakistan’s overturning the murder conviction of Imar Saeed Sheikh, who kidnapped and beheaded @WSJ reporter Daniel Pearl. Pakistan will never change its role as a state sponsor of terrorism. https://t.co/RhU67s0Kze
— Bill Roggio (@billroggio) April 2, 2020
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Comments
Omar Saeed Sheikh…hunt him down and kill him.
Should have done that right at the start. For the same reason that Guantanamo has always been a huge mistake – none of those guys should ever have been officially taken prisoner. I understand if the CIA wanted to question them for 24 hours before they’re tossed out of the helicopter, but it never should have gone on longer than that.
“Should have done that right at the start.”
Ditto.
I said it back in 2001–these people are NOT our friends. Never will be.
You can say that again!
George Bush made a horrible mistake claiming the vile ideology to be a “religion of peace”.
Imagine if it had been dealt with honestly at the time.
Can a HellFire be programmed to detonate in close proximity to his family jewels? He should know that he will be totally disfunction, that the 72 turds will not be deflowered.
Should we also do so for Hillary, Strok, Comey and Rosenstein?
The only think I know is NO ONE on the right will review the LEGAL DOCUMENTS AND EVIDENCE. Muslim Bad.
There is a Texas death row case where someone who unknowingly drove some robbers who killed a clerk also got the death sentence as an accessory.
I am suspect of any non-western justice system, but it is possible that they “rounded up the usual suspects” – that happens far more often but is complained about little = the innocent and the guilty.
Like happened when we flew to GITMO a bunch of Madras students after paying these Pakastani security forces $5k/”terrorist”. They managed to find a lot of fakes, but the real terrorists were harbored. Like Osama.
In these trying times, CIA wet-work is essential. Get r done.
there are some cultures and countries that are incompatible with our values. Even, with the values of the leftists in this country – for different reasons than the right.
But really, I cannot fathom why the LGBTQ crowd equates their own struggle with Islam; Christians might not agree with their lifestyles, but neither do we throw them off buildings. We might believe that in the eternities they will be in hell, but we do not send them there.
I do not understand why the radical feminists stand up for Islam – that is a culture that would not just send them back to the kitchen barefoot and pregnant, like they accuse Christians of wanting, but kill them if they object to it. I could give more examples.
I just do not understand.
“I just do not understand.”
Let me enlighten you. They are, every one of them, communists and communists will lie about anything that will enhance their power.
And they also live under the delusion that the Islamist groups they ally with are the useful idiots. They do not realize that it is they who are the useful idiots and the Islamist groups are just biding their time until that one day when Islam takes over.
They are Stupid and Ignorant – totally uneducated and uneducatable……..
If Trump dusted the paki sheikh and executed the gitmo sheikh – 2/3 of us Jews would be way way angrier at djt than the 2 troglodytes
Now that I will never understand.
It’s not exactly shocking, Islam doesn’t forbid the murder of infidels and so Omar committed no crime in the eyes of the court. As for his imprisonment, how do we know that? Islamic prisons are notorious for allowing prisoners to escape, or walk in and out as convenient, if their crimes were only committed against infidels.
It shows how Pathologicalstan remains pathological about anything connected to Jews.
To think, Pakistan has nukes.
A very dangerous combination.
This is a recurring these in the Muslim world. He is in fact a hero to the Pakisatanis. They are bigoted savages with no proper sense of justice at all.
Our soldiers have depended on supplies passing thru Pakistan which is the reason we haven’t take out the Taliban bases in Pakistan.
Yet another reason to get out of Afghanistan, ASAP. How much American treasure has been expended for the privilege of passage through Pakistan?
Our mission in Afghanistan was completed three weeks after it began.
Why continue enrich those who would harm us?
Hopefully the Israelis will take care of this injustice.