A Pakistani judge on Monday convicted four Islamic militants in the kidnap-slaying of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl and sentenced one of them to death. The others received 25 years imprisonment.
Lawyers for the chief defendant, British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, and the three others said they would appeal. Saeed was sentenced to hang for his role in the Jan. 23 abduction of Pearl (38) South Asia correspondent for the newspaper.
Pakistani authorities braced for a violent reaction by Islamic extremists. Police helicopters patrolled the skies over Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and a center of militant activity.
Pakistani newspapers on Saturday received an Urdu-language e-mail purportedly from Asif Ramzi, one of seven suspects still sought in the Pearl case, threatening more attacks against foreigners.
In the capital Islamabad, Interior Ministry official Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema said security had been bolstered at ”all important places and installations” nationwide. Officials said additional security was placed at foreign embassies in the capital.
Reporters were barred from the courtroom inside the heavily guarded jail here when Judge Ali Ashraf Shah rendered the verdict.
Deputy defence lawyer Mohsin Imam informed journalists of the decision.
Pearl disappeared in Karachi while researching Pakistani’s Islamic extremist movement, including possible links to Richard C. Reid, who was arrested in December on a flight between Paris and Miami with explosives in his shoes. A videotape sent in February to US diplomats confirmed Pearl was dead.
The four defendants – who also included Salman Saqib, Fahad Naseem and Shaikh Adil – were collectively fined 2-million rupees ($32 000), and chief prosecutor Raja Quereshi said the money would go to Pearl’s widow Mariane and their infant son, who was born after his father was killed.
In New York, Steven Goldstein, vice president of the Journal’s parent company Dow Jones, hailed the verdict.
”We continue to mourn Danny Pearl. And we continue to hope that everyone responsible for his kidnapping and murder will be brought to justice,” Goldstein said in a statement. ”Today’s verdict is one step in that direction.”
However, the trial has fanned the anger of Islamic militants against Pakistan’s government, which many extremists feel betrayed them by abandoning the Afghan Taliban and supporting the United States after September 11.
”The government will impose the decision at the behest of the United States,” said Sheikh Aslam, brother of defendant Sheikh Adil, as he arrived to hear the verdict. ”All executive decisions in Pakistan are being imposed by the United States.”
Before the verdict, defence lawyer Rai Bashir claimed the prosecution had offered ”no substantive evidence” against his clients and said he expected an acquittal ”unless the verdict is influenced by the government of Pakistan and the government of the United States of America.”
Security at the jail was tight as the verdict was announced.
Police used steel barricades on Monday to seal off both ends of the street in front of the jail. Truckloads of armed police, army soldiers and black-uniformed paramilitary commandos patrolled outside the walled jail compound. Police in a sandbagged bunker could be seen on the jail roof and sharpshooters took positions on nearby rooftops.
Western diplomats and some Pakistani observers fear the kidnap-slaying was the first shot in a war between Islamic extremists and this country’s Western-backed government.
Soon after the kidnapping, e-mails received by Pakistani and Western news organizations from the previously unknown National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty showed Pearl in captivity and demanded better treatment for Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The first e-mail called Pearl a CIA agent; a second claimed he was working for the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad.
Pearl’s family denied both allegations. Saeed and his co-defendants denied involvement in the kidnapping and accused the government of fabricating the case to appease American anger. Saeed admitted a role the kidnapping during his initial court appearance February 14 but later recanted.
Saeed was believed to have links with some of the country’s most violent Islamic extremist groups. The trial began April 22 in Karachi but was moved to Hyderabad, about 180 kilometres away, after prosecutors said they were receiving death threats.
On the highway between Karachi and Hyderabad, graffiti painted in black lettering on concrete barriers proclaimed: ”America, your death is coming,” and ”The war will continue until America is finished.”
Fearing a militant backlash to a guilty verdict, off-duty policemen in Karachi and other cities here in Sindh province were called in to work and top police commanders were on 24-hour call, officials said on condition of anonymity.
Prosecutors alleged that Saeed, a former student at the London School of Economics, lured Pearl to a Karachi restaurant with the promise of a meeting with an Islamic cleric, who has been cleared of any involvement in the kidnapping.
The prosecution relied heavily on technical evidence provided by the FBI, which traced the e-mails to co-defendant Naseem, who in turn identified Saeed and the others. Naseem said Saeed told him that he intended to grab someone who was ”anti-Islam and a Jew,” police reported.
Saeed and the others denied any involvement and claimed the government had coerced confessions and manufactured evidence to appease the Americans. The United States has asked for Saeed’s extradition to face U.S. charges in the Pearl case and in the 1994 kidnapping in India of an American, who was freed unharmed.
In his first court appearance February 14, Saeed admitted a role in the Pearl kidnapping but later recanted. The statement was not made under oath and was inadmissible.
The key prosecution witness, taxi driver Nasir Abbas, testified he saw Pearl get into a car with Saeed in front of a Karachi restaurant on the night the reporter vanished. The defence claimed Abbas was pressured into his statement. – Sapa-AP