Pearl slaying trial reopens

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Originally published Saturday, May 4, 2002

HYDERABAD, Pakistan -- The closed-door trial of Muslim militants charged in the kidnap-slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl resumed briefly under tight security Friday after moving from Karachi because of prosecution fears of a terrorist attack, officials said.

But the session was quickly adjourned after the defense appealed to the Supreme Court, saying the trial should be moved back to Karachi, lawyers said. The trial was to restart Monday.

Chief Prosecutor Raja Quereshi said he told the court he was ready to call five witnesses, but he declined to tell reporters who they were. The trial had been suspended for more than a week after Quereshi complained about the judge and security arrangements in Karachi.

Dozens of security officers were deployed around the colonial-era Hyderabad Central Jail compound, with sharpshooters positioned on rooftops and armored personnel carriers set up at intervals.

Defense lawyers said they thought the move ordered by the Sindh provincial high court at the prosecution's request was pointless.

"The prosecution's plea that the lives of the lawyers, judge and witnesses are endangered in Karachi is absurd," said Abdel Waheed Katpar, lawyer for the chief defendant, British-born Islamic militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh. "If terrorists can blow up the jail in Karachi, they can blow up the jail in Hyderabad."

The daily, 75-mile road trip east from Karachi exposes the lawyers to further risk, Katpar told reporters outside the Hyderabad jail, where the trial was resuming in a makeshift courtroom.

Katpar also dismissed the prosecution's claim that the former judge, Abdul Ghafoor Memon, had failed to keep the defendants from threatening prosecutors. The provincial high court replaced Memon with Judge Ali Ashraf Shah when it ordered the court change.

The real reason for the move and change in judge is that "they don't have a strong case," Katpar said.

All the prisoners were moved from Karachi in a police convoy Thursday evening, said jail supervisor Mohammed Nawaz. They were put in separate cells and are being observed by closed-circuit television.

The large jail was built under British colonial rule in 1891 with a capacity for 1,500 prisoners, officials said. It now houses more than 2,500.

In the first three days of the trial last week, witnesses identified Saeed as a man who made contacts with Pearl before he disappeared.

The trial of Saeed and three others accused in the Jan. 23 kidnapping and subsequent slaying of Pearl began April 22.

The four defendants have pleaded innocent to charges of murder, kidnapping and terrorism. They face the death penalty if convicted.

Reporters are barred from attending the trial, but lawyers and family members of the accused are allowed to sit in the courtroom.

Pearl disappeared in Karachi in January while researching links between Pakistan's militants and Richard C. Reid, the man arrested in December on a Paris-Miami flight, allegedly with explosives in his shoes.

A previously unknown group -- the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty -- sent e-mails in January revealing it had kidnapped Pearl.

A videotape received Feb. 21 by U.S. diplomats in Karachi confirmed Pearl, 38, was dead. His body has not been found.

The Olympian Copyright 2002

back to Terror in America index