KARACHI, July 14: It has been exactly five years since an anti-terrorism court sentenced British-born Shaikh Omar to death and his accomplices to life imprisonment in the US journalist Daniel Pearl kidnapping and murder case. However, the government seems unprepared to reopen the case even after the 2005 arrest of one of the proclaimed offenders.

The government fears that its entire prosecution story will be demolished by the defence counsel who are ready to begin their submissions before the court in the light of the new evidence once the trial of Qari Hashim Qadeer, the proclaimed offender arrested in the Pearl murder case in August 2005, begins inside the prison.

On July 15, 2002 Anti-Terrorism Court, Hyderabad, Judge Syed Ali Ashraf Shah sentenced Ahmed Omar Saeed Shaikh, commonly known as Shaikh Omar, to death. The convict’s three associates — Fahad Nasim, Salman Saqib and Shaikh Muhammad Adil — were sentenced to life imprisonment. No absconder was sentenced in absentia and it was decided that a fresh trial would be held by the court upon the arrest of any absconder in the case.

Subsequently, all the convicts filed appeals in the Sindh High Court and the state also moved an appeal praying the court to enhance the life terms awarded to the three convicts to a death sentence.

‘Govt lost interest’

Five years on, all the appeals remain undecided and last month an anti-terrorism appellate bench of the SHC put off the hearing till the second week of August.

Well-placed sources told Dawn that both the state and the convicts were responsible for an unusual delay in the hearings of all the appeals.“The government wanted a speedy disposal of the appeals but it started losing interest after the arrest of Hashim Qadeer,” said a source, adding that the convicts’ families were favouring adjournment because they were also waiting for the ‘appropriate time’.

Hashim Qadeer alias Arif was declared a proclaimed offender in the Pearl murder case by the ATC. He was arrested in Gujranwala in July 2005 and Karachi police formally remanded him on August 17, 2005 in the case. However, for the last two years, the Sindh home department has being dragging its heels over a notification for holding his trial inside the prison, fearing that the reopening of the case can be disastrous for the government.

An official of the home department confirmed that a notification for conducting a jail trial was yet to be issued.

Poor investigation

The sources said the police had poorly investigated the Pearl murder case but at that time they managed to prove their case before the trial court. However, it would be nearly impossible for the police to prove their case if the defence put new evidence before the court during the trial of Hashim Qadeer, they added.

The sources said that in case of Hashim’s trial, the defence would raise questions over the circumstances in which the police found the body of the Wall Street Journal reporter and who led the police to the place from where the body was found.

“Neither the recovery of Pearl’s body was on the trial court record nor the list of items seized from the accused persons are included in the weapon used to slay Pearl,” he added.

They said the disclosure made by President Gen Pervez Musharraf in his book “In the line of fire” that Al Qaeda’s operational head Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was behind the planning and murder of Pearl was enough to ruin the prosecution story that Shaikh Omar masterminded the kidnapping and he was behind the conspiracy that led to the killing of Pearl. They added that the police would have to substantiate the president’s statement in the court at the time of trial.

Reluctance to name other accused in the case

The sources said that for the last four years police had not showed the arrest of two militants, Attaur Rehman alias Naeem Bukhari and Faisal Bhatti, who also took part in the kidnapping and slaying of Pearl. However, a petition challenging their illegal detention forced the law-enforcers to show their formal arrest. Both Bukhari and Bhatti were shown arrested in the interior of Sindh last month in some other cases and not in the Pearl murder case.

Another militant, Fazal Karim, has been languishing in a jail in the interior of Sindh for the last four years on charges of drug trafficking despite his alleged involvement in the Pearl murder case as he was the one who led the investigators to a grave in a nursery on the outskirts of Karachi where police found Pearl’s decapitated body in 2002.

The sources said the government could not afford to nominate all the three men, Bukhari, Bhatti and Karim, in the Pearl case, but it there are reasons to believe that they could be summoned by the court holding the trial of Hashim Qadeer on the request of the defence and their deposition might change the entire case.

“Shaikh Omar and his jailed associates will be the biggest beneficiary of these developments,” said the source.

Reporter goes missing

Pearl went missing on January 23, 2002 in Karachi and later his wife Marianne Pearl lodged an FIR at a Karachi police station against unknown suuuspects. On February 22, 2002, the government announced Pearl’s killing after receiving and examining a videotape containing scenes of his slaying.

Later, in May 2002 a decapitated body was recovered from a shallow grave and after conducting a DNA test on it the government announced that it was that of Pearl. However, the announcement was made shortly after the July 15, 2002 verdict against Shaikh Omar.

In September 2004, law enforcement agencies killed a wanted militant Amjad Farooqi who was also on the list of absconding accused in the Pearl case.
Source: Dawn
Date:7/15/2007