Pakistan orders release of man who killed WSJ reporter Pearl

Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered the release Thursday of a Pakistani-British man convicted and later acquitted in the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002, reports Kathy Gannon of the Associated Press.

Gannon reports, “The court also dismissed an appeal of Ahmad Saeed Omar Sheikh’s acquittal filed by Pearl’s family and the Pakistani government.

“A minister in the Sindh province where Sheikh is being held said the government had exhausted all options to keep him locked up — an indication that Sheikh could be free within days. The ‘Supreme Court is the court of last resort,’ Murtaza Wahab, Sindh’s law minister, told The Associated Press.

“‘The Pearl family is in complete shock by the majority decision of the Supreme Court of Pakistan to acquit and release Ahmed Omer Sheikh and the other accused persons who kidnapped and killed Daniel Pearl,’ the Pearl family said in a statement released by their lawyer, Faisal Siddiqi.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.