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2020-10-09 India-Pakistan
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Pakistan’s top court rules Daniel Pearl killer to remain in prison
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[IsraelTimes] Relatives of Jewish news hound seeking to keep Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh on death row following his acquittal earlier this year of grisly beheading; proceedings could take years.
Pakistain’s Supreme Court on Monday accepted an appeal by the family of slain American journalist Daniel Pearl seeking to keep a British-born Pak man on death row over the beheading of the Wall Street Journal news hound.
The court delayed until next week hearing the appeal over the lower-court acquittal of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh,
Continued from Page 2
... a busy lad, the brilliant, violent Pakistani-Brit hooked up with the jihadi crowd at the London School of Economics, dropping out to join the jihadis in Bosnia — reportedly on orders from MI-6. After a break to run Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, he was jailed in India in 1994 for kidnapping four Western tourists in Kashmir on orders from Pakistan’s ISI. In 1999 Saeed Sheikh and two leaders of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen were traded for 155 passengers and crew of a hijacked Indian Airlines flight diverted to Kandahar, after which he wandered down to his Al Qaeda buddies in Pakistan... who had been on death row since his conviction in 2002 over Pearl’s killing.
The Supreme Court ordered Sheikh to remain in jug but Faisal Siddiqi, the lawyer for Pearl’s family, told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named on Monday the court will decide next week whether Sheikh will remain imprisoned during the course of the appeal, which could be years.
The government has argued against Sheikh’s release, despite his acquittal in April, saying it would endanger the public. But the Supreme Court will rule on that next week, Siddiqi said. He said Pakistain’s top court expressed concern about keeping Sheikh locked up even though he stands acquitted.
"The appeal could take years," said Siddiqi. "Today the court admitted the appeal and next week it will decide if Sheikh stays in jail" until the appeal is decided. The family is arguing for Sheikh’s continued incarceration.
Sheikh had been convicted of helping lure Pearl to a meeting in the southern Pak port city of Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
in which he was kidnapped. Pearl had been investigating the link between Pak gunnies and Richard C. Reid,
...Dickie is serving multiple life sentences in the Florence, CO federal supermax along with Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad’s nephew, and Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th 9/11 hijacker. In 2009 Obama’s Justice Department chose to eliminate the special administrative measures attached to Dickie’s sentence... dubbed the "Shoe Bomber" after trying to blow up a flight from Gay Paree to Miami with explosives hidden in his shoes.
It was December 2001, and Al Qaeda’s bomb maker still thought he was hot stuff. Another gent meant to do the same on a different flight chickened out and was caught... The lower court’s April ruling acquitted Sheikh and three other accomplices, who had been sentenced to life in jail for their role in the plot.
That’d be Fahad Naseem, Sheikh Adil, and Salman Saqib, about whom nothing else seems to be known. Saud Memon, accused of providing the place where Pearl was held before his death, died mysteriously in 2007, while Qari Hashim Ali was freed in 2014 when the court ruled there was not enough evidence to hold him.... The lower court found Sheikh guilty on a single lesser charge of abduction, which he is also appealing.
He has been in jail for eighteen years; the abduction charge carries only seven. The acquittal stunned the US government, Pearl’s family and journalism advocacy groups.
"We felt like (it was) a thunderstorm that is about to reopen our pains of 2002," Pearl’s father Judea Pearl told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named in an email Monday. "Pakistain’s judicial system caved to either inside or outside pressure to send a message of impunity to bad boy elements worldwide."
Following Monday’s court hearing, the Pearl family’s lawyer, Siddiqi, said there was "ample evidence" to overturn Sheikh’s appeal and return him to death row.
"There is eyewitness evidence, there is forensic evidence, there are confessional statements," Siddiqi said.
Among the confessional statements is a handwritten, July 19, 2019 letter by Sheikh that acknowledged his involvement in Pearl’s killing, Siddiqi said. In the letter, Sheikh said his involvement in Pearl’s death was "a relatively minor one." However,
you can observe a lot just by watching...
Siddiqi said Sheikh implicates himself in Pearl’s killing with that admission.
Sheikh’s lawyer, Mahmood Sheikh, told the AP he suffered a heart attack while arguing the case in the lower court, but remained confident the acquittal would stand.
"I have no doubt in my mind," Sheikh said. He said his doctors ordered him to remain on bed rest for the next two weeks, throwing into question whether the Supreme Court hearing will happen next week.
The Sindh provincial government also is appealing Sheikh’s acquittal.
Pearl, 38, of Encino, Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,, was kidnapped January 23, 2002. In Sheikh’s original trial, emails between Sheikh and Pearl presented in court showed Sheikh gained Pearl’s confidence sharing their experiences as both waited for the birth of their first child. Pearl’s wife Marianne Pearl gave birth to a son, Adam, in May 2002.
Evidence entered into court accused Sheikh of luring Pearl to his death, giving the American journalist a false sense of security as he promised to introduce him to a holy man with bad boy links.
Pak police sought to locate Pearl for weeks until a video received by US diplomats showed his beheading.
The 2019 letter by Sheikh was not among the evidence heard by the lower court that in April acquitted Sheikh on a number of charges, including the most serious of the kidnapping for ransom that lead to Pearl’s slaying.
"The 2019 letter is only one (piece of) evidence to something that we knew all along, without any doubt, that Sheikh lured Danny into the abduction trap which led to his murder," Pearl’s father Judea said. "We had copies of a long email exchange he had with Danny, using a pseudonym ’Bashir,’ was which was downloaded from Danny’s computer."
An investigation by students of Georgetown University in Washington implicated Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged criminal mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, in Pearl’s death.
More specifically, he told GITMO interrogators that he was the one who cut off Mr. Pearl’s head. Mohammed has been in US custody on Guantanamo Bay since his arrest in Pakistain in March 2003.
Pearl’s father said he has received assurances from the US State Department that it was closely following Sheikh’s acquittal and subsequent appeals. The trial’s outcome could impact relations between the two countries and again paint Pakistain as a haven for gunnies and bad boys, he said.
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Posted by trailing wife 2020-10-09 00:00||
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