The Sindh High court in Pakistan on Thursday (December 24) has ordered the immediate release of Omar Saeed Sheikh, in connection with the abduction and brutal murder/decapitation of journalist Daniel Pearl who was the South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal reports The Hindustan Times.
Sheikh was also one of the three terrorists India was forced free when Indian Airlines flight IC-814, was hijacked by a group of Pakistani terrorists which was bound from Kathmandu to Delhi in December 1999. Later the highjackers took the plane to Kandahar which was at that time under the control of the Taliban.
The Sindh high court said the detention orders for Sheikh and three other accused were null and void, ordering their immediate release. The judge presiding the case in his ruling observed, “These men have been rotting in jail for 18 years without committing any crime,”.
However, the court said their names should be put on a no-fly list so that they couldn’t leave Pakistan. Also, Sheikh had and many Pakistani observers still think has connections with Al Qaeda.
Omar Saeed Sheikh has spent 18 years on death row and his seven-year sentence for kidnapping was counted in the time already served, however, he is now a free man
Sheikh, a British citizen was born in London in 1973 of Pakistani origin, was freed by India along with Jaish-e-Mohammed founder Masood Azhar and terrorist Mushtaq Ahmad Zargar in December 1999.
It was again a case of Islamic radicalism because Sheikh was quite a bright student and had attended the London School of Economics (LSC) to study applied mathematics, statistics, economics and social psychology.
However, when he came in contact with radical Islamists at the LSE, his already predisposition towards violence took a turn towards violent Jihad.
Daniel Pearl, a Jewish American in his capacity as South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal was investigating and researching links between militants in Pakistan and Richard C Reid, known as the “shoe bomber” who tried to detonate a bomb while on a flight from Paris to Miami in 2001.
However, he was abducted in Karachi in January 2002 and was later has his throat slit and beheaded his captors in Karachi and this gruesome act of cold-blooded murder in the name of Islam was captured on video and is still in circulation in social media.