A court in Pakistan sentenced British-born Islamic militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh to death on Monday for the kidnapping and murder of US reporter Daniel Pearl.
Court officials said Judge Ashraf Ali Shah also found Sheikh Omar's three accomplices, Fahad Naseem, Salman Saqib and Sheikh Adil, guilty and sentenced them to life in prison.
Pearl was researching a story on Islamic fundamentalism for the Wall Street Journal when he was kidnapped in the port city of Karachi on January 23.
Although his body has never been identified, a video tape emerged clearly showing he had been killed.
Execution in Pakistan is carried out by hanging, but usually only after an exhaustive appeals process.
Sheikh Omar, the London-born son of a Pakistani cloth merchant, denied charges of kidnapping, murder and terrorism. He has been indicted in the United States and faced extradition if acquitted.
The other three men were charged with acting on his instructions.
Omar has had links to Muslim fundamentalist groups since dropping out of the London School of Economics in 1993 after a privileged upbringing that included being educated at a private school where he was described as a model pupil.
Inspired by atrocities against Muslims in the Balkans, Omar, 28, received training in Afghanistan and Pakistan and vowed to devote his life to the Islamic cause.
He was arrested in India in 1994 and charged with kidnapping four foreign tourists. He was released as part of a complicated swap in 1999, shortly before his trial, after hijackers seized an Air India plane and forced it to Kandahar, Afghanistan.
Investigators say they have found many similarities between the Indian kidnappings and the Pearl case.
"We have established that they are guilty," chief prosecutor Raja Qureshi told reporters after the trial ended on Friday. "We are demanding the death penalty for them."
Defence lawyers said earlier they were confident the case against their clients had not been proven -- but they expressed fears that pressure for a conviction may sway the verdict.
Pakistan's military rulers, keen for recognition and foreign aid, have been anxious to prevent attacks against Western targets in the country since President Pervez Musharraf threw his weight behind the US-led coalition against terror following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
"I pray to the learned court to decide the case without succumbing to any pressure and fear, and acquit them honorably so justice could be done," defence lawyer Rai Bashir said.
Pearl, the India-based correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, was researching a story on radical Muslim groups when he was kidnapped.
A month after his disappearance, a gory video showing Pearl had been murdered was delivered to the US consulate in Karachi. It showed the reporter being forced to admit he was Jewish, before showing his throat being slit.
Police found a body in a shallow grave on the outskirts of Karachi in May, but have not yet confirmed whether the remains are those of Pearl.
The trial started on April 5 inside a jail in Karachi, but was moved to Hyderabad in early May on security concerns. Reporters were barred from proceedings, but were briefed by both prosecutors and defence lawyers at the end of each day's hearings.
(China Daily July 15, 2002)
