Edited by: Fern Sidman

The United States may seek to try a man accused of killing American journalist Daniel Pearl after a Pakistani court ordered his release, according to acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen.

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British national of Pakistani origin, was sentenced to death by hanging for the abduction and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002 but his conviction was overturned by a Pakistani court in the summer of 2020, as was reported by Wikipedia.  In March 2007, at a closed military hearing in Guantánamo Bay, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a member of Al-Qaeda, claimed that he had personally beheaded Pearl. The Wikipedia report indicated that researchers have also connected Al-Qaeda member Saif al-Adel with the kidnapping.

Visceral anti-Semitism was the motivating factor in Pearl’s sadistic murders, as he told his killers that he was Jewish. Soon thereafter, he was publicly murdered.

“We remain grateful for the Pakistani government’s actions to appeal such rulings to ensure that he and his co-defendants are held accountable. If, however, those efforts do not succeed, the United States stands ready to take custody of Omar Sheikh to stand trial here. We cannot allow him to evade justice for his role in Daniel Pearl’s abduction and murder,” Mr. Rosen said.

The AP reported last week that Sheikh was acquitted of murdering Pearl earlier this year, but has been held while Pearl’s family appeals the acquittal. He had served 18 years in jail. The kidnapping charged carries with it up to seven years in prison.

Sheikh’s lawyer Mehmood A. Sheikh, with whom he is not related, called for his client to be released immediately, according to the AP report.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Pakistani authorities have been searching for a way to keep Sheikh detained—including appealing to the country’s Supreme Court to reinstate the conviction. Acting U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said Tuesday that if the authorities are unsuccessful, the U.S. was prepared to take the man into custody and pursue the case in the American court system.

“The detention order is struck down,” said Faisal Siddiqi, the Pearl family lawyer, according to the AP report. Sheikh will be freed until the appeal is completed, he said, but will be returned to prison if the family is successful in overturning the acquittal.

Sheikh was sentenced to death and three others were sentenced to life in prison for their role in Pearl’s death, according to the AP report.

The April acquittal stunned the U.S. government, Pearl’s family and journalism advocacy groups. The acquittal is now being appealed separately by both the government and Pearl’s family, as was reported by AP.

“The separate judicial rulings reversing his conviction and ordering his release are an affront to terrorism victims everywhere,” Rosen said in a statement, according to the AP story.

If efforts to reinstate Sheikh’s conviction were not successful, he said, “The United States stands ready to take custody of Omar Sheikh to stand trial here.

“We cannot allow him to evade justice for his role in Daniel Pearl’s abduction and murder,” Rosen added.

The four are being held under the emergency orders of the local government while an ongoing appeal against their acquittals is heard in the Supreme Court, but defense lawyers argued against their continued detention in the southern province, according to the AP story.

“We remain grateful for the Pakistani government’s actions to appeal such rulings to ensure that (Sheikh) and his co-defendants are held accountable,” Rosen said.

On January 23, 2002, on his way to what he thought was an interview with Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani at the Village Restaurant in downtown Karachi, Pearl was kidnapped near the Metropole Hotel at 7:00 p.m. by a militant group calling itself the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, according to the Wikipedia report. The group claimed Pearl was a spy and—using a Hotmail e-mail address—sent the United States a range of demands, including the freeing of all Pakistani terror detainees, and the release of a halted U.S. shipment of F-16 fighter jets to the Pakistani government.

The message read:

We give you one more day if America will not meet our demands we will kill Daniel. Then this cycle will continue and no American journalist could enter Pakistan.

Photos of Pearl handcuffed with a gun at his head and holding up a newspaper were attached. The group did not respond to public pleas for release of the journalist by his editor and his wife Mariane. United States intelligence forces tried to track down the kidnappers.

The inclusion of certain high ranking officers and agents of the Pakistani intelligent service were also found in the abduction of Pearl as the Pakistani government had close ties with Al-Qaeda, according to information on Wikipedia.

At the time of his murder, Pearl was reporting for an article about religious extremists in Pakistan as part of the paper’s coverage in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S, according to a WSJ report.

A video of the murder was released on the internet. The kidnapping and death shed light on the complicated nature of Pakistani geopolitics, according to the WSJ report. It created international headlines and placed enormous pressure on Pakistan to find the killers and bring them to justice. In the years since, Pakistan has been criticized over its record of cracking down on Islamic extremism within its borders. The WSJ reported that yerrorist leader Osama bin Laden, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 plot, was living in Abbottabad when he was killed by U.S. Special Forces.

In addition, insurgents targeting U.S. forces in Afghanistan operate from across the border in Pakistan