Authorities in Pakistan said they will seek to continue the detention of British national Omar Sheikh, who was convicted in 2002 on charges of masterminding the kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
A Pakistani court ordered the release of Sheikh on Thursday.
Faiz Shah, a prosecutor in the southern Sindh province, said that Sheikh will remain in prison, citing an earlier ruling from the country’s Supreme Court.
“He will be detained,” Shah told the Wall Street Journal.
Pearl was reporting on militant networks in Pakistan for the Wall Street Journal when he was kidnapped in January 2002. He was killed days later. As many as 27 different individuals were thought to have played a role in Pearl’s death, according to Georgetown University’s Pearl Project, but only Sheikh and three others were charged.
In April, a court in Karachi, the largest city in Pakistan, overturned Sheikh’s conviction, citing “many missing links in the chain of evidence from the abduction of Pearl to his ultimate murder.” Sheikh has been in prison for 18 years. After a two-person judicial panel voided his previous death sentence penalty, most of the charges against Sheikh were dropped, and his sentence was reduced to seven years, making Sheikh eligible for release.
The convictions of three accomplices were also overturned in the April ruling, but authorities used emergency detention powers to keep the accomplices and Sheikh imprisoned, according to the Wall Street Journal.
After the court issued its rulings, the United States said that “there must be justice for Daniel’s kidnapping and murder, and the United States stands with the Pearl family during this arduous and painful process.”
The same Karachi court ruled Thursday that using those emergency powers was not justified in this case, though Sheikh’s lawyer, Mahmood Sheikh, said that his client is still not allowed to leave the country.
The lawyers said he expects all four individuals to be released this week.
“The court has directed that they will not be arrested by any agency, no action detrimental to their liberty will be taken,” he said.
Both government authorities and Pearl’s family have appealed the April rulings to Pakistan’s Supreme Court. A hearing has been scheduled for January 2021.
Sheikh was born in the United Kingdom and encountered radical Islamists at the London School of Economics and Political Science, according to the Guardian. He was arrested in 1994 and charged in connection to conflicts in Bosnia. His 1999 release was ordered by Indian airline hijackers. He has been in Pakistan since he was released.
