Sheikh Omar Gets Death Penalty for Murder of US Journalist

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, July 15, 2002

Sheikh Omar Gets Death Penalty for Murder of US Journalist

A Pakistani court has sentenced British-born militant Ahmed Omar Saeed to death for abducting and murdering Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, state television announced Monday.

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An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan's Hyderabad on Monday gave death penalty to British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh accused of kidnapping and murdering US journalist Daniel Pearl, according to a news dispatch received in Islamabad.

Anti-Terrorism Court Judge Syed Ali Ashraf Shah also sentenced to 25-year jail term three other accused in the case in Hyderabad jail under tight security.

The four were found guilty of killing Daniel Pearl, a journalist of the Wall Street Journal. The trial continued for three-months.

Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in Karachi in January. An unknown group called the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty had demanded the release of al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters being held in Cuba in return for his release.

Omar Sheikh was accused of masterminding the killing of Pearl.

The prosecution's case rested on a confession by Omar Sheikh which he later retracted, and the evidence of a taxi driver who testified that he had seen him meeting Pearl at a Karachi restaurant the night Pearl disappeared.

Omar Sheikh will have the right of appeal to two higher courts before the sentence can be carried out.

Omar Sheikh is one of the three militant leaders released from Indian jails in 1999 in return for the passengers on board a hijacked Indian Airlines jet that was flown to the Afghan city of Kandahar.

He was educated both in Pakistan and Britain, but broke off hisstudies at the London School of Economics to go and fight as a militant in Bosnia and then in Kashmir.

At least 600 policemen and para-military Frontier Constabulary personnel were deployed by the district administration in and outside the central jail as Anti-Terrorism Court Judge Syed Ali Ashraf Shah pronounced the verdict.

The Hyderabad district police had called 100 elite commandos, who had recently passed out from a training school, Karachi, as part of security measures.

Police raided several places in Karachi overnight raids and arrested more than 30 activists of different religious organizations.

Officials said that they were apprehended to avoid any reactionto the verdict. They said the police raided various locations and nabbed the activists.

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