A detailed story how the Pearl accused got clean chit from Court
By: Azaz Syed
On 5 February 2002, around midday, Deputy Inspector General (Police) Javed Noor was at his official residence in Lahore when he received a call from the then provincial Home Secretary Brigadier (r) Ejaz Shah. He informed Noor about some ‘significant progress’ made regarding the Daniel Pearl’s kidnapping case.
Brigadier Shah said Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, the main suspect in the case at that time, had surrendered. Until then no one was aware that Pearl had, in fact, been killed. Shah wanted the accused handed over to the police through due legal process. Police, on the contrary, had already rounded up his elderly grandfather Sheikh Muhammad Ismail and paternal uncle Tariq Ismail along with a few women of the family from Mohni Road and Johar Town areas in Lahore – ostensibly as part of practice to help investigation process.
Omar Sheikh’s maternal uncle, Sheikh Abdur Rauf, was posted as a District and Sessions Judge in Muzaffargarh at the time. Having assessed the case in detail, he was instrumental in convincing his nephew to give himself up. Interestingly, Judge Rauf was a good friend of DIG Noor, so the matter of handing Omar over proceeded smoothly.
“We were fearful of a fake police encounter. The DIG was a former class fellow so we went to see him,” Sheikh Rauf told this correspondent recently. He also shared details of events that followed.
Police were not the only force involved in proceedings against Sheikh’s family. Other security institutions were also active. When DIG Noor informed Brigadier Shah that he Omar was at his home, he promptly reached there but then left immediately. Omar, the suspect until then and later the main accused, arrived at Noor’s residence with his father, Saeed Ahmad Sheikh and his maternal uncle Sheikh Abdur Rauf.
Surprisingly police have failed to recover the murder weapon even after 18 years of the incident
Rauf briefed Noor about the case, which then had a chat with Omar about his ideology and beliefs. During their conversation, the calls for Zohar prayers were heard. Noor asked Omar if he wanted to pray he could do so in his house. In fact, he asked him to lead the prayers. “He was impressive and I thought he was a better Muslim amongst all of us present there so I invited him to lead the prayers,” Noor told this correspondent many years ago.
The meeting was followed by formal procedures for the arrest. The police and intelligence agencies interrogated Omar before sending him off to Karachi on 12 February 2002 on a PIA flight under the maximum security.
DIG Noor personally narrated the story of Sheikh’s arrest to me years ago. Omar’s father and uncle of had confirmed his account. Brig Shah also verified the entire account in 2014 when I met him at his home in Lahore.
When the court hearing began for Daniel Pearl’s murder case, the police astonishingly took the position in the charge sheet that Omar had actually been arrested from Karachi Airport on 12 February 2002. Omar, on the contrary, had said in his own confession that he had courted arrest on 5 February 2002, and that he had been brought on a PIA flight to Karachi on 12 February the same year. His father and uncle were his defence witnesses in the court. Media reports of his arrest from Lahore played a vital role in weakening the position of the state against Omar.
Omar’s lawyer, Mahmud A Sheikh also presented news clippings and TV footages of his arrest. The prosecution had no response to this. The natural question is why did the police lie about Omar’s arrest in such an important case? No one has answered this yet. The story of Daniel Pearl’s case started when the journalist landed in Karachi a day after 9/11. After spending some time in Karachi since arriving from India, the Wall Street Journal journalist started searching for one Mubarak Ali Gilani for his alleged connections with a militant called Richard Reid. Arrested in Europe, Reid was reportedly a British terrorist who tried to blow up a Paris to Miami flight with a bomb hidden in his. The search for Gilani introduced Pearl to Ahmad Omer Saeed Sheikh.
Police and prosecution’s record say Omar first appeared in relation to the Daniel Pearl case on 11 January 2002 at Akbar International Hotel in Rawalpindi. He met Pearl through Asif Farooqi, a journalist working with Pearl at the time. It was also Farooqi’s first meeting with Omar and he did not know that the man meeting them as “Bashir” was actually Omar Sheikh. Interestingly, Omar was staying at the same hotel as Faruq Muzaffar – his other alias.
“The meeting lasted for almost over an hour. Omar spoke English in a made up accent so I could not judge if he had British grooming. Omar pretended to be a disciple of Gilani, and said he would try to arrange a meeting between Gilani and Pearl,” recalls senior journalist Raza (not a real name), who spoke for the first time to this correspondent after 18 long years of this incident. He is a witness to the meeting.
Prosecution claimed in the court that the conspiracy to murder Pearl was hatched in the same hotel room on 11 January 2002 where two more accused Fahad Nasim and Syed Suleman Saqib were also present.
Nasim and Saqib are two Karachi-based cousins who according to the police sent e-mails to Pearl’s wife and US authorities listing demands in return for Pearl’s release. Prosecution, however, remained unable to corroborate the presence of the two men through any proof or a witness.
A few days after the 11 January 2002 meeting, Omar called Pearl and asked him to come to Karachi. On 23 January 2002, before proceeding to meet Omar (Bashir), Pearl called Asif Farooqi asking if it was okay to meet him. Farooqi gave him two tips – “meet the man in a public place and don’t take your wife along”. Pearl told Farooqi his wife won’t be accompanying him and he would be meeting Bashir (Omar) and Gilani at a public place.
On that fateful day, Pearl met with a man named Jameel Yusuf Ahmed, a businessman and founder of Citizen Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) in Karachi. Ahmed later confirmed that during their meeting Pearl received a call and said to the caller that, “I am near your office. I remember I have to meet you.”
Soon after, Pearl left Ahmed’s office to meet Bashir (Omar). Pearl drove to the Metropole Hotel from Ahmed’s office by a taxi driver named Nasir Abbas and this was the last time when the American journalist was seen alive publically. According to the taxi driver, as soon as his taxi came to a halt, a white corolla pulled up and he saw a man (later identified as Omar) coming out of the car and then meeting the Pearl and they departed together.
Data related to the call made to Pearl and the number it was made from were presented to the court by the prosecution. It turned out that the phone number mentioned was not Omar’s but of someone called Mr Siddiqui in Karachi. Hence, this lead also went nowhere in the court. The question arises why the prosecution did not check the identity of the phone number they had presented in the court? Defence also took the position that the man presented in the court as the taxi driver was, in fact, a police officer. This also raises certain questions. For example, why did the police rely on a false witness? Did the police acted independently or under order orders?
The saga of weak investigations and prosecution in Pearl’s case did not end here. It continued until the end of the case in the Supreme Court.
Sindh Police based Daniel Pearl murder case on the confessional statements of Fahad Nasim and Syed Salman Saqib. Both these accused had played a vital role in transmitting the information of Pearl’s kidnapping and then issuing demands if the American journalist’s release was to be secured. It was accused that both were acting under the directions of Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh (Omar).
Police and the prosecution say that the last email sent on 30 January 30 by the two, made Pearl’s release conditional on the fulfillment of demands such as the freedom for Mullah Abdus-Salam Zaeef, the Afghan Ambassador to Islamabad (who was detained in Pakistan and was later handed over to the US authorities), supplying of F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan, and freeing of Muslim prisoners in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. “If these demands were not fulfilled within 24 hours, they would kill Daniel Pearl,” said their email.
Confession statements by the accused, submitted before the judicial magistrate, claim that Omar provided them the lists of handwritten demands – in English and Urdu. The last email was, in fact, sent by Nasim from his uncle’s house because Omar had strictly forbidden both of them from using public internet facilities or their own home computers for this purpose. It was the Internet connection that ultimately led the investigators to the accused.
Legally only voluntary confessions hold any importance in the courts
A judicial magistrate, Iram Jahangir, recorded confessions by the duo. Besides recording their statements, she penned down an additional note saying the confessions were not offered voluntarily. The magistrate had concluded through question-answer sessions that both the accused were either tortured in detention or were promised that they would be freed through bail if they gave confessional statements. The additional note by the magistrate came to cast doubt on the confessions of the two men.
Legally, only voluntary confessions hold any importance in the courts. Police and the prosecution very strangely ignored this fact and established the case on a weak foundation that was later destroyed in the court by the defense. Why was this done? Why were more evidences not collected? Did this all happen by mistake or it was done intentionally?
Other discrepancies relating to various aspects of the weak investigations were also found. For example, the testimony of a handwriting expert named Ghulam Akbar in the court. He had told the investigators that the papers provided to both the accused listing the demands for the release of Pearl were actually written by Omar. The investigators did not consider the fact that the ‘expert’ lacked proper qualification and had no prior experience in the field. Akbar was a vital individual for he had to give opinion on two important pieces of evidence. The piece written in English was by Omar and the one in Urdu was by another accused called Adil. Omar reportedly gave these pieces of paper to Nasim and Saqib. Omar’s lawyer Mahmud Ahmad Shaikh exploited the ‘expert’s’ inexperience during cross-examination and stressed that his opinion should not have possibly been relied upon. Police, arguably ruined the case by employing an irrelevant person.
The matter of the laptop that was used by the two accused to send the email of Daniel Pearl’s kidnapping is worth special interest too. The machine was, in fact, recovered at the time of their arrest but the prosecution had introduced discrepancies regarding that as well. As per the police stance the laptop was recovered from the accused men at around midnight. However, the US FBI computer forensic expert and witness Ronald Joseph said he was told two days prior to arriving in Pakistan, i.e. on 29 January 2002, that he was to examine a laptop in Pakistan.
Joseph arrived in Pakistan on 4 February 2002, and was given the computer that very evening. He kept working on it for four to six hours daily for six days. The court took the position that if the American expert was informed about this laptop on 29 January, then how come the last email relating to Daniel Pearl’s ransom was sent from it on 30 January? If it is assumed for argument’s sake that this computer belonged to Asra Numani (a friend of Pearl who travelled to Pakistan along with Pearl and his wife) then which computer the police used to read emails from in the court. Police did not clarify which computer was presented before the court?
The court stated that either the time of the computer’s recovery was noted down incorrectly or the FBI expert’s account of the matter was incorrect. The court suspected that the computer had been tampered before being handed over to the FBI expert. This apparent blunder by the prosecution caused the loss of the most important piece of evidence recovered in the Pearl’s case.
Surprisingly, the police have failed to recover the murder weapon even after 18 years of the incident. The only evidence relating to Pearl’s murder presented to the court was not by the Karachi police. It was a film that FBI presented before the court saying it reached them through a ‘source’. The footage showed Pearl being murdered but it did not show the murderer’s face meaning the prosecution remained unable to prove Pearl’s murder in court. Similarly, no murder weapon was presented before the court nor the dead body or a report relating to recovered body parts proving that Pearl was, in fact, murdered. Just a video was presented, about which the US Consul-General admitted in the cross-examination that the film had been recorded in a studio. The police could not provide any piece of evidence linking Omar’s presence at the spot where the murder was being recorded.
Omar’s lawyer presented 26 judicial references during the hearing, while only about 10 references were presented by the Additional Prosecutor General to prove the role of the alleged killers. In the Sindh High Court verdict, Omar was declared to be convicted only of the crime of kidnapping and not of kidnapping for ransom, because neither the prosecution was able to appropriately present all the evidence related to kidnapping for ransom nor could both the aforementioned accuser’s confessions employed properly. Omar was awarded seven years and told to pay Pearl’s widow Rs2 million failing that he would serve two more years in jail. The court considered that the accused has already spent 18 years in jail. Later in the Supreme Court, Omar was also acquitted from the allegation of kidnapping as defense apparently proved that the only witness (the taxi driver) who claimed watching Pearl go with Omar was a fake witness (actually a police official pretending to be the taxi driver).
Ostensibly the case of Daniel Pearl’s murder was effectively ruined due to weak investigation and prosecution. Pakistan’s highest court on 28 January displayed adherence to the law but Pearl’s widow and journalists searching for the truth in dangerous circumstances in the world have perhaps not been able to receive justice.
