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Sheikh’s Trial Has Many Loopholes: Robert Fisk
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| A Pakistani man reads a paper carrying the news of Sheikh’s death sentence |
LONDON,
July 16 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – The trial of
British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the convicted murderer of U.S.
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, has many loopholes, leading
British journalist Robert Fisk wrote in The Independent.
The
death sentence passed at Sheikh was the most bizarre episode in a very
odd and very unique and a very unfair trial, said Fisk, adding that
the trial was held in secret, in the bunker beneath Hyderabad prison
and that no reporters were allowed to witness the 13 weeks of
proceedings.
Another
loop, he added, was that the body of Pearl, which was allegedly dug up
May 17 in a Karachi slum, has never been formally identified.
“Even
the results of the DNA analysis of the remains has stayed secret. DNA
samples were sent to both Pakistani laboratories in Lahore and the
United States. Yet neither the Pakistanis nor the Americans has told
us what they found. Why not?” said Fisk.
He
added that Sheikh was already in custody when the American consulate
received a videotape which showed an anonymous hand cutting the
reporter’s throat with a knife.
Even
the cab driver who claimed that he saw Sheikh drive off from a Karachi
restaurant with Pearl on 23 January, retracted his evidence later.
According
to Fisk, Sheikh’s lawyer, Moshin Imam, argued against the verdict on
grounds of illegal court procedures rather than his client's
innocence.
Imam
said that the judge had been shown the videotape of Pearl's murder,
but in Pakistani law, according to Imam, a videotape cannot be played
in court without the presence of the man who made it – an
impossibility when the actual murderer has yet to be apprehended.
“Mr.
Sheikh was held in illegal custody before being allowed access to a
lawyer, Mr. Imam said, which gave the police time to beat him into a
confession. He was condemned only because Pakistan wanted to appease
the United States,” said Fisk.
According
to Fisk, the Pakistanis refused the American request to extradite
Sheikh and interrogate him abut his contacts with Al-Qaeda. “Some
suspect they know the reason: because Mr. Sheikh might tell the
Americans about the links between Al-Qaeda and Pakistan's own
intelligence organization,” he said.
The
trial was held in Hyderabad, nearly 200 miles away from Karachi, for
fear that the prosecutors might be assassinated, Fisk said. Forensic
scientists initially refused to attend the exhumation of the court in
Karachi on 16 May for fear that they, too, would later be murdered, he
added.
A
Pakistani court on Monday, July 15, sentenced Sheikh, better known as
Sheikh Omar, to death, and sentenced three others to 25 years
imprisonment for the kidnap and murder of Pearl, who disappeared in
Karachi on January 23.
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