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Pakistan Top Stories

Co-accused in Daniel Pearl murder case acquitted

HYDERABAD: A co-accused in Wall Street Journal’s reporter Daniel Pearl’s muder case was acquitted by an anti-terrorist court (ATC).

Qari Hashim was acquitted in the Daniel Pearl kidnapping-cum-murder case for lack of evidence during a jail trial at Hyderabad’s central jail.

Hashim was arrested in August 2005 in connection with the kidnapping of Pearl .

Defence counsel Sher Mohammad Leghari had filed an application pleading the court to acquit the accused  under Section 265-K of the Criminal Procedure Code, arguing that there was no evidence against his client.

According to Leghari, Hashim had been apprehended for arranging a meeting for Daniel Pearl with Mubarak Ali Shah Gillani. The court acquitted the accused for lack of evidence.

Pearl went missing in Jan 2002 in Karachi and a month later the government announced that he had been killed after receiving and examining a videotape containing scenes of his beheading.

In May 2002, a decapitated body was recovered from a shallow grave and after a DNA test, the government announced that the body was of Pearl. However, the announcement was made shortly after the July 15, 2002 verdict against prime accused Ahmed Omar Seed Shaikh.

ATC judge Syed Ali Ashraf Shah had awarded the death sentence to Omar Shaikh and life imprisonment to the co-accused. They have filed an appeal before the Sindh High Court whereas the Sindh government has filed an appeal for enhancement of the sentences awarded to the co-accused.

Omar Sheikh and the co-accused were kept in Karachi central prison and then were transferred due to security reasons to the colonial era Hyderabad central prison in May 2002.

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