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To be released: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh (archive recording)
Photo: Zia Mazhar / AP
The alleged murderer of the murdered US journalist Daniel Pearl is to be released.
That was decided by Pakistan's Supreme Court.
The new US administration reacted "indignantly" to the judges' decision.
The confirmation of the acquittal of the British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh is an "affront to victims of terrorism everywhere," said White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki.
She called on the Pakistani government to examine its "legal options" in the case.
The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed prosecutor's appeals against the acquittals of Sheikh and three other suspects at a lower court.
This court had overturned a death sentence against Sheikh as well as prison sentences against the three co-defendants in April 2020.
The Supreme Court has now ordered all four men to be released from custody.
US authorities immediately demanded that the four convicts remain in custody.
Pearl's family had also sued against the release.
The kidnapped and later murdered Danie Pearl
Photo: HO / REUTERS
Pearl, the then 38-year-old South Asia bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal, was abducted in early 2002 while researching radical Islamists in Pakistan and was later beheaded.
The perpetrators published a video of it.
Sheikh was arrested that same year and sentenced to death by an anti-terrorist tribunal, while the three co-defendants received life sentences.
In 2011 there were doubts about the guilt of the Sheikhs.
A report from the Pearl Project at Georgetown University in Washington said the wrong men had been convicted of murdering the journalist.
According to this, the reporter of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of the September 11th 2001 attacks, and not Sheikh, was murdered.
Icon: The mirror
as / dpa / AFP
