South Asia News
Pakistani lawyers appeal in Pearl murder case
Mar 19, 2007, 14:19 GMT
Islamabad - Lawyers representing a Pakistani man on death row for executing US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 said Monday they are appealing using new evidence from the confession of the claimed organizer of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
'A new situation has been created, since according to Pentagon proceedings, Daniel Pearl's actual abductor and murderer is Khalid Shaikh Mohammed,' defence counsel Rai Basheer Ahmed told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Guantanamo Bay prisoner Khalid Shaikh Mohammed this month told US authorities that he masterminded the September 2001 jetliner attacks on New York and Washington and personally executed Pearl.
In July 2002, a Pakistani court sentenced British-born militant Sheikh Omar to death for the kidnapping and murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter in Karachi earlier that year. Three accomplices were sentenced to life in prison.
A high court was due to hear the pending appeal last week but proceedings were postponed amid protests over the suspension of the country's top judge.
'We are obtaining documents and after studying these we will consider producing them as additional evidence,' Ahmed said, adding that the appeal is likely to be heard in April.
In a rambling confession made at a closed hearing at the detention centre on Cuba, the former senior al-Qaeda member Mohammed boasted of beheading Pearl, who was working on alleged links between the terrorist organization and Pakistani intelligence agencies.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-AgenturCOMMENT
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Older Talkback
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As muslims, they are liars. If 1 admits to being the killer, it is only to help the real killer to get off. Do not hold your breath that the Pakistanian courts will do the right thing. They sold their soles to the devil when they became muslims.
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Joe from MinnesotaMar 19th, 2007 - 15:19:06
Khalid Sheik Mohammad also confessed to a slew of other operations that he was planning like, assassinating President Carter and blowing up Library Tower in California, the Sears Tower in Chicago, several suspension bridges in New York, Heathrow Airport in London, the Canary Wharf Building, New York Stock Exchange, the Plaza Bank in Washington State (although he was captured in early 2003 and the Plaza wasn't completed until 2006), and last but not least, the Empire State Building in New York City.
He also planned to destroy American military vessels and oil tankers in the Straits of Hormuz, the Straits of Gibralter, the Port of Singapore, and the Panama Canal. On a side trip to the Philippines, he masterminded the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II.
I forgot to mention that he admitted to personally decapitated “the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan,” he testified, although his fat body doesn't in anyway resemble the fit militant in the video.
He also admitted to being responsible for, the nightclub bombings in Bali and during an overnight flight from South Korea, he personally identified targets “such as American military bases and a few night clubs frequented by American soldiers.” Perhaps it was on that flight that he planned the “Shoe Bomber Operation to down two American airplanes.”
Good thing he was tortured or else we may have never know that he was such an evil mastermind.
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