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Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was sentenced to death by a Pakistani court in 2002 (archive image)
Photo: AAMIR QURESHI / AFP
In the murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl, a Pakistani court ordered the release of four convicts.
This should be done within 24 hours, said the lawyer for the four men.
The death sentence against the British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and the sentences against three co-defendants had already been overturned in April.
After harsh criticism from the US, the Pakistani public prosecutor appealed to the Supreme Court.
Pearl, the then 38-year-old South Asia bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal, was abducted in early 2002 while researching radical Islamists in Pakistan and was later murdered.
Sheikh was arrested that same year and sentenced to death by an anti-terrorist tribunal, while three other co-defendants received life sentences.
In 2011, doubts were raised about the Sheikh's guilt.
A report from the Pearl Project at Georgetown University in the United States said the wrong men had been convicted of Pearl's murder.
Accordingly, the reporter was murdered by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and not by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh.
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ene / AFP