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Daniel Pearl's case in
limbo
By B Raman
The case
relating to the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl,
the US journalist, in the beginning of last year
continues to be in a limbo, with no action by the
government of Pakistan President General Pervez
Musharraf to have the hearing on the appeal filed by the
accused expedited.
In the meanwhile, one of the
dramatis personae - a former officer of Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), who used to be the
handling officer of Omar Sheikh, the principal accused,
and one of the handling officers of Osama bin Laden and
Mullah Omar - the Taliban leader - could be rewarded
with an ambassadorial appointment.
On July 15,
2002, a special anti-terrorism court in Hyderabad, Sindh
province, found Ahmed Omar Sheikh, Syed Salman Saquib,
Sheikh Muhammad Adil and Fahad Naseem guilty of the
kidnapping and murder of Pearl. While Omar Sheikh was
sentenced to death, the other three were sentenced to
life imprisonment. Shortly thereafter, they appealed
against their sentences before a division bench of the
Sindh High Court.
Though it is now a year since
the appeal was filed, there has been no progress in the
hearing of the appeal. The defense lawyers have
repeatedly absented themselves from the court, an action
that has already adjourned the hearing six times. The
sixth adjournment was granted on September 25. The case
has now been fixed for hearing on October 21.
The court warned that if the defense lawyers do
not appear on that date, it would dispense with their
services and appoint a government lawyer to defend the
accused.
Pakistan's Anti-Terrorism Act, which
has been repeatedly amended by successive governments to
ensure expeditious disposal of the trial and the appeal
in terrorism-related cases, contains adequate provisions
for preventing such repeated adjournments and other
means for delaying a trial.
When Musharraf had
former prime minister Nawaz Sharif prosecuted under the
Anti-Terrorism Act, the prosecution under his
instructions ensured that the trial was disposed of and
Sharif convicted within the time limits laid down by the
act. In the case relating to the murder of Pearl, the
prosecution itself has apparently been colluding with
the defense lawyers and has refrained from moving the
court to stop the delaying tactics repeatedly adopted by
the defense lawyers.
In the meanwhile, Brigadier
(retired) Ejaz Shah, Home Secretary of Punjab, before
whom Omar Sheikh had surrendered in February last year,
has reportedly been selected by Musharraf for posting as
Pakistan's ambassador to Indonesia.
Before
joining as home secretary, Punjab, he worked in the
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and was once Omar
Sheikh's principal handling officer, as well as one of
bin Laden's and Mullah Omar's. When the Lahore and
Karachi police started searching for Omar Sheikh after
the kidnapping of Pearl, he surrendered to Ejaz Shah as
he was afraid that the Karachi police might torture him.
Ejaz Shah immediately informed General Mohammad
Aziz Khan, presently chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
Committee, who was No 2 in the ISI until October 1998,
and the two carefully debriefed Omar Sheikh as to what
he should tell the police during his interrogation. He
was kept in their informal custody for a week and,
thereafter, handed over to the police, who were told to
announce that they had arrested him while searching for
him, without mentioning that he had voluntarily
surrendered to Shah.
Aziz and Shah did not want
Omar Sheikh to admit to the Karachi police any role in
the explosion outside the Legislative Assembly of Jammu
& Kashmir in October, 2001, in the attack on the
Indian parliament in December, 2001, and about his
having told Lieutenant-General Ehsanul Haq, the present
director general of the ISI, who was Corps Commander in
Peshawar before October, 2001, about the plans of
al-Qaeda to carry out terrorist strikes in the US.
However, Omar Sheikh disregarded their advice
and told the Karachi police about these events. The
News, a prestigious daily, came to know of some of his
confessions to the Karachi police. The editor of the
paper rejected a request from the ISI not to publish the
story. Musharraf thereupon forced the owner to sack the
editor, who went into exile in the US fearing a threat
to his life from the ISI.
Thereafter, Musharraf
selected Shah for posting as High Commissioner to
Australia, which reportedly refused to give its
agreement to his appointment. It is now learnt that
Musharraf has instructed his Foreign Office that he
should be sent as ambassador to Indonesia. It remains to
be seen whether Jakarta agrees.
If it does, this
will be the fourth instance in recent years of ex-ISI
officers being appointed to head Pakistani diplomatic
missions in this region. The other three missions are
those at Pyongyang, North Korea, which has always been
headed by an ISI officer who had worked in the division
responsible for the clandestine procurement of nuclear
materials and missiles; Kuala Lumpur, which is the nerve
center for supervising the activities of the Tablighi
Jamaat, a conservative Islamic missionary group founded
in India 75 years ago, in the Southeast Asian region,
Australia and New Zealand; and Bangkok, which is a
suspected transit point for the infiltration of
terrorists into India by air.
B Raman
is Additional Secretary (ret), Cabinet Secretariat,
Government of India, and presently director, Institute
For Topical Studies, Chennai; former member of the
National Security Advisory Board of the Government of
India. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com. He was also head
of the counter-terrorism division of the Research &
Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency,
from 1988 to August, 1994.
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