18 years on, the gruesome murder of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl remains engulfed in mystery. The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Thursday overturned the life sentence, awarded to three accused by a trial court on charges of kidnap and murder, for lack of evidence and sentenced only the main accused, Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, to seven-year imprisonment on abduction charge. Having already spent more than double of that time in jail, Sheikh, too is likely to be released along with his co-accused. The US State Department has criticised the verdict calling it "an affront to victims of terrorism everywhere." Top American diplomat for South Asia Alice Wells tweeted "those responsible for Daniel's heinous killing must face the full measure of justice." The prosecution has also indicated its intention to go into appeal against SHC's decision.
The prosecution's case contains many loopholes and contradistinctions. The court, for instance, observed that it could not rely on the confessional statements of two appellants recorded by a judicial magistrate after a delay of 27 days. And that more importantly, the magistrate later admitted before the trial court that the confessions were not voluntary. No surprise there, for it is common for the police in this country to use enforced confessions to make up for lack of evidence. About Sheikh, the court said that he could not be convicted of kidnapping for ransom or murder merely on the basis of the victim having been last seen with him, without unimpeachable corroborative evidence, which was lacking in this case. Noting another glaring inconsistency, the court pointed out that the police claimed to have recovered a laptop, allegedly used to send emails to Mrs Pearl to demand ransom, on the night of February 10-11 from a house where one of the accused was staying, whereas according to an FBI officer he had examined the same on February 4.
Cited in the verdict are several other contradictions in the prosecution's case. Interestingly, however, the court also explained why the police would do such a shoddy job, observing that the case being "extremely high profile" the police were under huge pressure to recover the abducted journalist or arrest those responsible. "Under the circumstances it would not be surprising if the police resorted to rough tactics in order to extract confessions."
All these and more points raised by the court make ample sense. But if these people were not involved in the brutal murder of Daniel Pearl, who was? We may never have a proper answer because those involved probably were the violent extremists he had wanted to contact to seek information about Richard Reid, "the shoe bomber". No one would be ready to give evidence against such dangerous people. This is why during the height of terrorist violence it was decided, as part of political consensus, to introduce witness protection programme. In fact, Sindh and Punjab have enacted witness protection laws. But they are yet to be backed by necessary arrangements such as submission of evidence through video links, and use of screen and other measures to hide witness identity. The SHC decision in the present case only highlights how systemic weaknesses weaken the ability of prosecution to bring real culprits to justice.