Man accused of killing journalist Daniel Pearl to stay in prison

 JournalismPakistan.com |  Published: 4 April 2020

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh will remain in prison for three months due to public safety concerns. His previous murder sentence was overturned, now serving time for kidnapping.

Summary

KARACHI–Pakistani provincial government has ordered a British-Pakistani man, whose sentence was suspended for kidnapping and murdering a US journalist, to remain in prison for three months.

Karachi Central Prison Superintendent, Hasan Sehtoo, said the Sindh Provincial Government ordered him that Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh’s release would endanger public security. The government ordered his detention when she appealed to the Supreme Court of Pakistan to resume his murder conviction.

Saeed was found guilty of murder and kidnapping in 2002 when Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl died and sentenced to death.

On Thursday, the Sindh High Court overturned his murder sentence, and he was sentenced to seven years for kidnapping.

Pearl disappeared in Karachi on January 23, 2002, when he was investigating links between Pakistani militants and Richard C. Reid, who became known as the “shoe bomber” after being arrested on a flight from Paris to Miami with explosives in his shoes.

Prosecutors said Saeed lured Pearl into promising to arrange an interview with an Islamic minister who the police believed was not involved in the conspiracy.—AP