Pearl 'murderer' to appeal
2007-03-19 07:22
Karachi - Lawyers for a British-born militant sentenced to hang for the murder of Daniel Pearl say they will try to use a confession by al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to seek his release.
Mohammed, the al-Qaeda number three who was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and transferred to US custody a week later, admitted during a closed-door US military hearing in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to having beheaded the journalist, according to an edited transcript released on Wednesday by the Pentagon.
Mohammed was never charged for Pearl's murder in trials here and his name did not even appear in the case files, a senior police officer said.
After months of investigations, police blamed the kidnapping and subsequent beheading in the southern city of Karachi on a group of Islamic militants headed by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, also known as Sheikh Omar.
Omar was arrested with three other colleagues and convicted of Pearl's murder in June 2002 by an anti-terrorism court. Seven other co-accused were punished in absentia and two of them were later killed in encounters with the police.
The court documents said they masterminded Pearl's kidnapping in an attempt to win freedom for al-Qaeda men locked in Guantanamo Bay.
Omar lodged his appeal at the high court of Pakistan's southern Sindh province a month after the June 2002 verdict, but the case has been adjourned more than 40 times.
"I am trying to get a copy of Mohammed's statement as it vindicates" Omar, his lawyer Khwaja Sultan told AFP this week.
This statement shows the Pakistani government wanted to implicate Omar, instead of Mohammed who was the real killer, Sultan said.
"I have got more evidence, documents from the US to prove my client's innocence," he added.
In his confession, Mohammed said: "I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan."
"For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the internet holding his head," he said.
Pearl, 38, was the South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal when he was abducted in Karachi on January 23, 2002 while researching a story about Islamic militants.