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Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh accused in murder case
The US has expressed displeasure over the Supreme Court’s order to release four people, including the extremist Omar Saeed Sheikh, accused of killing American journalist Daniel Pearl. In 2002, Daniel Pearl was killed.
The White House has said that it is an insult to the victims of extremism everywhere.
Pearl, a Wall Street general journalist, was kidnapped and murdered in the southern part of Karachi, which shook the entire world.
He went on to do stories on extremist groups operating in Pakistan.
Sheikh was arrested a few days after Pearl’s kidnapping and was later found guilty of murder by an anti-terror court. He was to be hanged after being convicted.
But in April 2020, the Sindh High Court reduced Shaikh’s conviction and convicted him only of kidnapping and released him along with three others who were guilty in the case.
The decision was denounced by the family of Daniel Pearl, after which the Pakistani government and his family challenged the decision in the Supreme Court.
But the Supreme Court of Pakistan rejected the petitions filed against this decision on January 29 and ordered to release them.
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Daniel pearl
What happened to Daniel Pearl?
Chief Pearl of the Wall Street Journal’s South Asia bureau disappeared in January 2002.
He was looking for links between Islamic extremist activities and Richard Reid in Karachi. Reid tried to detonate a passenger plane by hiding a bomb in shoes.
Prosecutors accused Sheikh of luring Pearl to introduce him to a cleric.
The relationship between Pearl and Sheikh was also made with the concerns of their wives as they were both pregnant at that time.
After this, Pearl disappeared and emails were sent to Pakistani and American news institutions which had many demands. One of these demands was also to treat Pakistani prisoners in American jails better.
A month later, a video of 38-year-old Pearl’s murder was sent to the American consulate in Karachi.
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Saeed Sheikh, father of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh
Who is Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh?
Born in London in 1973, Sheikh studied at an independent school before studying at the London School of Economics.
He did not complete his graduation and in the first year he campaigned for Bosnia for help but he failed to go there.
He was arrested in India in 1994. He was arrested in connection with the kidnapping of four tourists, three British and one American citizen.
He was released in 1999 when extremists hijacked an Indian Airlines IC-814 aircraft and the hijackers demanded his release.
The US media was quoted by government officials as saying that Sheikh was also accused of transferring money to the account of an extremist of the September 11, 2001 attack in the US.
