ISLAMABAD (AP) – Pakistan is struggling to manage the consequences of a country’s Supreme Court decision to release the British-Pakistani man accused in the beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002.
The provincial government of Sindh filed a petition for review on Friday, asking the same court to review its decision.
But even the Pearl family lawyer said a petition for revision has little chance of success because it is heard by the same judges who voted for Ahmad Saeed Omar Sheikh’s freedom. The case appears to have collapsed because of the contradictory evidence produced during Sheikh’s original trial in 2002 and the prosecution’s decision at the time to try him along with three other accused co-conspirators. According to the Pearl family lawyer, Faisal Siddiqi, this means that doubt about one’s guilt translates into doubt about everyone.
Washington expressed outrage, promising to seek Sheikh’s extradition on two separate US charges against him. In turn, the Pakistani government has lifted all possible legal obstacles to keeping Sheikh in prison after his acquittal in April by a lower court.
WHAT LEGAL OPTIONS REMAINING FOR PAKISTAN?
The Sindh provincial government took the last remaining legal step by filing a review petition with the Supreme Court on Friday. It is unlikely to change the outcome, but it can give the provincial government legal coverage to keep Sheikh in prison in the port city of Karachi, capital of the southern province of Sindh.
Defying the Supreme Court’s order to release Sheikh may again leave the Sindh government facing charges of contempt. He has defended himself from previous accusations of contempt for previously refusing to release him, ignoring a lower court order.
Pakistan may also consider charging him in connection with allegations that he had nine different SIM cards for phones he used to contact friends, including some in Britain, in 2009, while on death row. There were suggestions in local media in Pakistan that he used SIM cards to ask for help to get him out of Hyderabad prison, where he had been on death row since his conviction in 2002. He was transferred to a prison in Karachi after his acquittal in April.
WHAT OPTIONS ARE OPEN FOR THE USA?
US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said that Washington is ready to extradite the sheikh to answer two charges against him in US courts – one for his involvement in beheading Pearl and the other for his involvement in the kidnapping of a American Kashmir in 1994, alongside three British tourists. All four were released unharmed.
There are some obstacles to extradition: Pakistan, like the United States, has a double risk rule that prevents a person from being tried for the same crime twice. The United States also does not have an extradition treaty with Pakistan, although Islamabad has bypassed the legality to send suspects to the United States, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the alleged perpetrator of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Mohammed has been in US custody in Guantánamo Bay since his arrest in Pakistan in March 2003. He also confessed that he killed Pearl, but was not charged with the death of the Wall Street Journal reporter. The most recent example of Pakistan allowing someone accused of a crime to leave for the United States was in 2011, when Raymond Davis, an American contractor at the United States Embassy, returned home after shooting two people in the city of Lahore, east of the country. He said he opened fire because he felt threatened.
HOW CAN THIS CASE IMPACT US-PAKISTAN RELATIONS?
The case may be one of the first major tests for President Joe Biden and US-Pakistan relations have historically been in turmoil. Pakistan is likely to play a crucial role in the Biden government’s attempts to navigate the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan. Pakistan was seen as the key to putting the Taliban in negotiations with the Kabul government, even though these negotiations have been terribly slow and have so far been unsuccessful, even as violence has increased.
Mohammad Amir Rana, executive director of the Pakistan Peace Studies Institute, said that Sheikh’s acquittal created an enigma for both countries. So far, Pakistan has taken all legal steps to keep Sheikh in prison, but sending him to the United States could stir up opposition at home, explained Rana. For America, snubbing Pakistan just when the two agreed to exchange intelligence on terrorist financing and the road to a political settlement in Afghanistan is at a critical juncture, could result in setbacks on both fronts.
WHO IS AHMAD SAEED OMAR SHEIKH?
British nationality of Pakistani descent, Sheikh lived a relatively privileged life in Britain, where she attended the prestigious London School of Economics. It appears that he was inspired by jihad by the conflict in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the relentless attacks on Muslims in Bosnia at the time, his treatment in Bosnian Serbian camps and what Sheikh considered Western indifference to his situation.
He traveled to Bosnia and later joined Harakat-a-Ansar, a militant group based in Pakistan that was declared a terrorist group by the United States in 1997 and later became known as Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen. He also traveled to the Indian-run section of Kashmir to wage war against India in the Muslim-majority region. The disputed Himalayan region is divided between India and Pakistan and claimed by both in their entirety.
The Sheik’s strength seemed to be his ability to use his British education to attract foreigners to trust him. This ability led to the kidnapping of the American tourist in 1994 and, according to some evidence, alleviated any concerns that Pearl might have when trying to track down militants in Pakistan.
Sheikh was arrested by India after the 1994 hijackings, but was among the terrorist suspects released by India on December 31, 1999 in exchange for hostages on an Indian Airlines aircraft that was hijacked and taken from Nepal to the then controlled Afghan city. by the Kandahar Taliban.