Posted on 01/28/21
| News Source: i24
Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal bureau chief, was kidnapped and beheaded in Karachi in 2002
Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the release of an Islamist convicted of beheading US journalist Daniel Pearl, a decision that has left his family in “complete shock,” lawyers said.
Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was the main suspect in the 2002 kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal South Asia bureau chief and reporter Pearl, was acquitted by a panel of three judges.
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“By a majority of two to one, they have acquitted all the accused persons and ordered their release,” a provincial advocate general, Salman Talibuddin, told Reuters.
Pearl, 38, was investigating Islamist militants in Karachi after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States when he was lured to a meeting on the pretext of meeting a senior jihadist figure, and subsequently kidnapped.
His case grabbed headlines globally after a video of his beheading emerged weeks after he was abducted, in which he was also forced to declare his being Jewish, prior to the killing. Read more at i24