A Pakistani court on Thursday ordered the immediate release of Omar Saeed Sheikh, one of the three terrorists liberated from India in 1999, in exchange for the passengers of a hijacked commercial airliner. He declared his detention in connection with the kidnapping and murder of journalist Daniel Pearl as zero and zero emptiness.
The Sindh Supreme Court said the arrest warrants for Sheikh and three other defendants were void. While ordering their release, the court said their names should be placed on a no-fly list so that they cannot leave Pakistan.
“These men have been rotting in prison for 18 years without committing a crime,” the presiding judge stated.
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In April, the Supreme Court heard the appeals of Sheikh, Fahad Naseem, Sheikh Adil and Salman Saqib 18 years after their conviction and the acquittal of Sheikh, Saqib and Naseem.
It commuted Sheikh’s death sentence to seven years in prison and fined him 2 million rupees. Sheikh has served 18 years on death row and his seven-year prison sentence for kidnapping was counted in the time already served.
However, the federal government issued a preventive detention order for a period of 90 days, during which the four men remained in detention.
The first notification came on the day the men were acquitted and a second three months after their first term ended. It is not clear what action the federal government will take now, but it has spoken out against the release of Sheikh and the other defendant in the past.
38-year-old Daniel Pearl was head of the South Asian bureau of the Wall Street Journal when he was kidnapped in Karachi in January 2002 while investigating links between militants in Pakistan and Richard C Reid, known as the “shoe bomber” for trying did detonate a bomb on a flight from Paris to Miami in 2001. Pearl was later killed by his kidnappers in Karachi.
Sheikh, a British citizen of Pakistani origin, was liberated from India along with the founder of Jaish-e-Mohammed, Masood Azhar, and the terrorist Mushtaq Ahmad Zargar in exchange for passengers on Indian Airlines flight IC-814, which was carried by a group of Pakistani Terrorist kidnapped Kathmandu to Kandahar in December 1999.