NP newsroom
KARACHI: The Government of Sindh has appealed to the Supreme Court of Pakistan against the Sindh High Court’s (SHC) ruling in the Daniel Pearl case, whereby three of the four convicts were acquitted and a death sentence to Daniel Pearl’s murderer was commuted.
The Sindh government has asked Pakistan’s top court to quash the SHC’s ruling and restore the death penalty Ahmed Omer Saeed Sheikh. Sheikh’s sentence was commuted to a seven-year prison term.
The Sindh government also appealed to the Supreme Court to restore the life imprisonment sentences to Sheikh’s three accomplices Fahad Naseem, Syed Salman Saqib and Sheikh Mohammad Adil.
Earlier this month, the SHC had acquitted three of the accused in the kidnapping and murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl back in 2002. It had also converted prime accused Ahmed Omer Saeed Sheikh’s death penalty into seven-year imprisonment.
A two-judge bench of the high court — headed by Justice Mohammad Karim Khan Agha — had reserved the judgement in March after hearing the arguments of the appellants and the state counsel.
The court had commuted Omar’s death sentence to seven years in jail for kidnapping, since the murder charges were not proven, according to a lawyer.
However, the Sindh government had invoked the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) law to prevent all of the Daniel Pearl murder suspects from walking free, ordering they be kept in detention for another 90 days.
