Judge in Daniel Pearl murder case replaced

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Originally published Saturday, April 20, 2002

KARACHI, Pakistan -- A Pakistani court replaced the judge in the case of slain U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl on Friday, just days before the four defendants were to enter pleas, attorneys said.

The lawyer for the chief defendant, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, had asked that Judge Arshad Noor Khan be removed because he was present during a Feb. 14 hearing at which the British-born Islamic militant admitted his role in the kidnapping. Saeed later recanted, and his lawyers argued that allowing Khan to preside would be prejudicial to the defense.

The High Court of Sindh province ruled in favor of the defense and appointed a new judge, Abdul Ghafoor Memon.

Chief prosecutor Raja Quereshi did not challenge the defense request and said he did not expect the change of judges to delay the proceedings. Saeed and his three co-defendants are expected to enter pleas Monday as planned, Quereshi said. Seven defendants remain at large.

"We believe in a fair and transparent trial," Quereshi added.

Proceedings against the four defendants began April 5. However, the two previous sessions were quickly adjourned -- once to enable the defense to receive evidence and later to allow time to complete legal steps for trying the seven fugitive defendants.

Pearl, South Asia correspondent of The Wall Street Journal, disappeared Jan. 23 after leaving for a meeting with Islamic militant contacts at a Karachi restaurant. A videotape received by U.S. diplomats confirmed his death. His body has not been found.

The 38-year-old journalist was supposedly researching links between Pakistani militants and Richard C. Reid, who was arrested in December on a Paris to Miami flight with explosives in his shoes.

Saeed, 28, and the others were arrested in February before Pearl's death was confirmed. U.S. and Pakistani investigators traced e-mails announcing Pearl's kidnapping to defendant Fahad Naseem, who told police that Saeed was the mastermind.

Naseem quoted Saeed as saying he was planning to kidnap someone who was "anti-Islam and a Jew," according to police.

Saeed has also been indicted by a federal grand jury in New Jersey in the Pearl case. He also is accused of the 1994 kidnapping of an American in India who was released unharmed.

Saeed was held for five years without trial in an Indian prison but was freed in December 1999 along with two other Islamic militants in exchange for passengers and crew of a hijacked Indian Airlines jet.

In an op-ed piece published Friday in The New York Times, Pearl's widow, Mariane, urged the Pakistani people to "act against evil" by building a memorial to her husband in Karachi.

Pearl, a French free-lance journalist who is about to give birth to the couple's only child, said the project would show that the overwhelmingly Muslim nation condemns the extremists accused in her husband's killing.

"I will bring our son to this memorial and tell him this is the land where his father died, but that the people here stood by us so that his death would not be in vain," she wrote.

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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