Daniel Pearl murder case: SHC issues notices to authorities on contempt petition

(Karachi) The Sindh High Court (SHC) issued notices to the Sindh chief secretary and others in a contempt petition over detention of the accused of Daniel Pearl murder case, local media reported on Thursday.

A SHC bench had declared a notification with regard to detention of four accused in the case, Ahmed Omer Saeed Shaikh, co-accused Fahad Naseem, Salman Saqib and Sheikh Adil, as null and void and ordered their immediate release from the jail.

A contempt of court petition was filed against the provincial chief secretary, jail officials and others over the government’s failure in compliance of the court orders.

The court issued notices to the chief secretary, additional chief secretary over the contempt petition and summoned reply from them and the jail officials on January 7.

“Why the accused were not released over the court orders,” the bench asked the Advocate General Sindh. “Issue a notice we will submit a written reply over the matter,” the advocate general replied.

Earlier, the Court had declared the detention orders of the accused in the Daniel Pearl murder case as null and void and ordered their immediate release from jail.

The court issued the verdict on a petition filed by the suspects' lawyer against their detention. The court directed the authorities to immediately release the prime suspect in Daniel Pearl's murder case Omar Saeed Sheikh and others Fahad Naseem, Sheikh Adil, and Salman Saqib. All the suspects were detained under Section 11 EEEE (preventive detention for inquiry) of the Anti-Terrorism Act.

The SHC also ordered to place their names on the no-fly list. The court observed that men have been in rotting in jail for 18 years.

On April 2, 2020, the court heard the appeals of the suspects against the sentence. It commuted Sheikh’s death sentence to seven years and fined him Rs2,000,000. Sheikh has already spent 18 years in prison on death row and his seven-year sentence for kidnapping was counted as time served.

According to the law, the government may issue preventive detention of any person accused of terrorism for a period of 90 days and it cannot be challenged in court. The first notification was issued the day the men were acquitted and the second one three months after they completed their detention period.

Now, the court has ruled that the use of the emergency detention powers is not justified in Daniel Pearl's case. Moreover, the court has said that Sheikh cannot be kept under "any sort of detention" and declared the Sindh government's detention notifications "null and void". He is expected to be free in the coming days.

In a separate case, the federal government and Daniel Pearl's family have appealed against the Sindh court's April decision in the country's Supreme Court. The next hearing in that separate case is likely to take place in January 2021.

American journalist Daniel Pearl disappeared on January 23, 2002, in Karachi. A videotape received by U.S. diplomats in February 2002 confirmed that the 38-year-old journalist was dead.

Authorities later arrested Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a former student at the London School of Economics, and three others who were convicted in July 2002. But in April, a court overturned the murder conviction of Saeed, a British Pakistani national, though it found him guilty of kidnapping Pearl and sentenced him to seven years.