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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (43013)	7/15/2002 6:14:34 PM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

Omar threatens Musharraf: ‘I shall see who dies first’ Defiant Omar Sheikh sentenced to death Co-accused sentenced to 25 years in jail each Defence lawyers say they will appeal Allege sentence was expected because Pearl was an American By Sarfaraz Ahmed..Daily Times report.. HYDERABAD: An anti-terrorism court on Monday sentenced Omar Ahmed Saeed Sheikh to death for kidnapping and murdering Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl. The co-accused Fahad Naseem, Sheikh Adil and Salman Saqib were each sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment. It took about two minutes for the judge, Ali Ashraf Shah, to announce the verdict. Omar Sheikh and his three co-defendants showed no emotion, according to a source present at the in-camera (closed) proceedings. “The accused Omar Sheikh is sentenced to death under Section 7 of the Anti Terrorism Act (ATA), 1997 to be hanged by the neck till he is dead,” the court ruled in its judgment consisting of 54 pages. “It appears that Omar Sheikh engineered the entire plan of the crime under trial to create a sense of fear nationally and internationally, and thereby made a conspiracy for the same and he was the principal offender. It was made with his efforts and those by the other three accused, his aides for the purpose,” the court observed. Lawyer Rai Bashir Ahmed, who defended the co-accused, said “they were calm and quiet, as if they had been expecting this judgement.” The counsel for Omar Sheikh, Abdul Waheed Katpar, was not present on Monday so his deputy, Mohsin Imam, represented Omar. Rai Bashir quoted Omar Sheikh as describing the trial afterwards as ‘an exercise to kill time’. “I maintained silence only out of respect for my father,” Omar Sheikh is said to have added in a statement read out to journalists by Rai Bashir. He also quoted Omar Sheikh as saying: “I shall see who will die first, I or the authorities who have arranged the death sentence.” “This is a decisive war between Islam and kufr (infidelity). And everybody with his individual act is proving whom he is siding with. Musharraf should know that Almighty Allah is there, and His wrath is silent.” Rai Bashir also read out the statements of Salman Saqib and Fahd Nasim, who expressed lack of trust in the judgement. “This was already expected,” the statement said. Rai Bashir rejected the sentences, saying “there was no substantive piece of evidence in the case.” He said the defence would appeal the verdict in the Sindh High Court. He charged that the judge “was pressured by the government, which has dictated this decision.” He said that to appease the United States, Pervez Musharraf had pressured the judge to pronounce a guilty verdict. “Had it been the murder of a Pakistani national, the case would have been rejected outright, because the evidence was so weak.” But “the judge succumbed to pressure” because it was an American who had died, according to him. He said the case had been taken on flimsy grounds from Karachi’s judge Abdul Ghafoor Memon, whom he praised as a man of integrity. But Sindh advocate general Raja Qureshi said there had been absolutely no intervention from any source. He told journalists that the judgement was based on evidence showing conspiracy, demand for ransom, destruction of evidence and murder. He said the prosecution would file an appeal for the enhancement of sentences of the three co-accused, if the government wanted him to do so.