ISLAMABAD , 16 July — A Pakistani court yesterday sentenced British-born militant Sheikh Omar to death by hanging for abducting and murdering US journalist Daniel Pearl, while handing down life sentences to three accomplices.
But Pearl’s convicted murderer had his own threat for the secret Pakistani court which sentenced him. "I will see whether who wants to kill me will kill me first, or get himself killed,’’ Omar told Judge Ashraf Ali Shah in the basement of Hyderabad Prison. "I fought this case just to please my father... I have said this before, this entire trial is a waste of time... it is a decisive war between Islam and infidels...’’
But the British-born prisoner’s death threat was only the most bizarre episode in a very odd and very unique and — so the defense has constantly claimed — a very unfair trial. It was held in secret, in the bunker beneath Hyderabad Prison. No reporters were allowed to witness the 13 weeks of proceedings. The body, said to be that of Pearl, was dug up in a Karachi slum on May 17 but has never been formally identified. Even the results of the DNA analysis of the remains have stayed secret. DNA samples were sent to both Pakistani laboratories in Lahore and the United States. Yet neither the Pakistanis nor the Americans have told us what they found. Why not?
Few Westerners, of course, doubt that Omar Sheikh was involved in Pearl’s murder, although he was already in custody when the American Consulate received a videotape which showed an anonymous hand cutting the reporter’s throat with a knife.
Anti-terrorism court judge Shah announced the verdict in a two-minute sitting inside a prison bristling with rooftop snipers and paramilitary troops in Hyderabad.
Omar was ordered to "be hanged by the neck until he is dead," a copy of the 55-page court statement said.
He was to be shifted to Hyderabad Prison’s death row, joining another 75 condemned inmates, Sindh provincial prisons chief Brig. Nisar Mehar told AFP.
Omar, Salman Saqib, Fahad Nasim and Sheikh Adil were all convicted under Pakistan’s five-year-old Anti-Terrorism Act. The life sentences given to Omar’s accomplices usually run for 25 years in Pakistan.
"In my opinion the legal requirements have been fulfilled," chief prosecutor Raja Qureshi told reporters outside the court.
The defense team immediately announced an appeal and the four convicts issued venomous statements through their lawyers.
The defense accused the court of buckling to government pressure to appease the United States, and Defense counsel Rai Bashir lashed out at President Pervez Musharraf.
"President Musharraf had already announced that he wanted the death penalty for Omar," Bashir told reporters. Co-defense counsel Mohsin Imam called the verdict "unjust and harsh." Relatives blamed the verdict on Islamabad’s alliance with Washington.
"My son is innocent but he was already condemned to death by President Musharraf before the trial even began," Omar’s father Sheikh Ahmed Saeed said. The United States has hailed the judgment. Leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami said justice had not been done and called for an open trial.
Legal experts said the case could be in the courts for years. "There is already a two-judge High Court set up to hear appeals arising from anti-terrorism courts," Pakistan Bar Council member Zia Ahmad Awan told AFP.
"From the High Court, they can still go to the Supreme Court. All this means a long drawn-out legal process."
All four convicts were fined 500,000 rupees ($8,330) which they were ordered to pay to Pearl’s widow and her baby son, whom she gave birth to in May.
In Los Angeles, Pearl’s family said they were "grateful" for Pakistan’s work to bring those guilty of the journalist’s gruesome murder to justice. (The Independent)
