Anti-Terrorism Court of Pakistan hands down the death sentence to British born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and life terms to three others suspected of murdering The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh (Urdu: ; sometimes known as Umar Sheikh, Sheikh Omar, Sheik Syed or by the alias Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad; born 23 December 1973) is a British Pakistani terrorist. He was arrested and served time in Indian prison for the 1994 kidnappings of Western tourists in India, an act which he acknowledges he was responsible for. He was released in 1999 and provided safe passage into Afghanistan with the support of Taliban in exchange for passengers aboard hijacked Indian Airlines Flight 814. He is most well known for his role in the 2002 kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Saeed was arrested by Pakistani police on 12 February 2002, in Lahore, in connection with the Pearl kidnapping and was sentenced to death on 15 July 2002 by special judge of anti terrorism court Syed Ali Ashraf Shah for killing Pearl. Sheikh's murder conviction was overturned by a Pakistani Court on 2 April 2020.Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, in his book In the Line of Fire, stated that Saeed was originally recruited by British intelligence agency MI6 while studying at the London School of Economics. He alleges Saeed was sent to the Balkans by MI6 to engage in operations. Musharraf later says, "At some point, he probably became a rogue or double agent".His complicity in the murder and the reasons behind it have never been in dispute. At his initial court appearance, he stated, "I don't want to defend this case. I did this ... Right or wrong, I had my reasons. I think that our country shouldn't be catering to America's needs", but he subsequently appealed his conviction and is awaiting further progress while in prison. Saeed's lawyer has stated he will base his client's appeal on the admission of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, made public in 2007, that he is the killer of Daniel Pearl.
Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 227 million, and has the world's second-largest Muslim population. Pakistan is the 33rd-largest country by area, spanning 881,913 square kilometres (340,509 square miles). It has a 1,046-kilometre (650-mile) coastline along the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman in the south, and is bordered by India to the east, Afghanistan to the west, Iran to the southwest, and China to the northeast. It is separated narrowly from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor in the north, and also shares a maritime border with Oman.
Pakistan is the site of several ancient cultures, including the 8,500-year-old Neolithic site of Mehrgarh in Balochistan, and the Indus Valley Civilisation of the Bronze Age, the most extensive of the civilisations of the Old World. The region that comprises the modern state of Pakistan was the realm of multiple empires and dynasties, including the Achaemenid; briefly that of Alexander the Great; the Seleucid, the Maurya, the Kushan, the Gupta; the Umayyad Caliphate in its southern regions, the Hindu Shahi, the Ghaznavids, the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughals, the Durranis, the Sikh Empire, British East India Company rule, and most recently, the British Indian Empire from 1858 to 1947.
Spurred by the Pakistan Movement, which sought a homeland for the Muslims of British India, and election victories in 1946 by the All-India Muslim League, Pakistan gained independence in 1947 after the Partition of the British Indian Empire, which awarded separate statehood to its Muslim-majority regions and was accompanied by an unparalleled mass migration and loss of life. Initially a Dominion of the British Commonwealth, Pakistan officially drafted its constitution in 1956, and emerged as a declared Islamic republic. In 1971, the exclave of East Pakistan seceded as the new country of Bangladesh after a nine-month-long civil war. In the following four decades, Pakistan has been ruled by governments whose descriptions, although complex, commonly alternated between civilian and military, democratic and authoritarian, relatively secular and Islamist. Pakistan elected a civilian government in 2008, and in 2010 adopted a parliamentary system with periodic elections.Pakistan is a regional and middle power nation, and has the world's sixth-largest standing armed forces. It is a declared nuclear-weapons state, and is ranked amongst the emerging and growth-leading economies, with a large and rapidly-growing middle class. Pakistan's political history since independence has been characterized by periods of significant economic and military growth as well as those of political and economic instability. It is an ethnically and linguistically diverse country, with similarly diverse geography and wildlife. However, the country continues to face challenges, including poverty, illiteracy, corruption and terrorism. Pakistan is a member of the United Nations, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the Commonwealth of Nations, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, and the Islamic Military Counter-Terrorism Coalition, and is designated as a major non-NATO ally by the United States.