Pakistani prosecutor charges suspects in murder of Wall Street Journal reporter

Friday, March 22nd 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

(KARACHI, Pakistan) - One hundred police with automatic weapons ringed the courthouse Friday as prosecutors charged a British-educated Islamic militant and 10 accomplices with the kidnap-murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Seven of the suspects remain at large. All face the death penalty if convicted.

Chief Prosecutor Raja Quereshi accused Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the chief suspect, and 10 others of murder, kidnapping and terrorism.

The decision to charge Saeed in Pakistan will complicate efforts to have him stand trial in the United States. American prosecutors could now have to wait for the case to play itself out in Pakistani courts _ a process that could take years if appeals are filed.

Neither the body of the 38-year-old American reporter nor the murder weapon has been found.

``We have circumstantial evidence and also the videotape of Daniel Pearl's murder,'' Quereshi told reporters after presenting the charges in a closed-door hearing. ``We will present that, too, as evidence.''

The court will convene again March 29, when the judge will decide whether there's enough evidence to accept the charges. Once that step is taken, the trial would begin immediately.

Saeed and co-defendant Sheikh Mohammed Adeel were taken to court in an armored car escorted by two dozen police vans mounted with machine guns. The other two suspects in custody, Fahad Naseem and Salman Saqib, did not attend Friday's court session.

Saeed is the key suspect in the Jan. 23 kidnapping of Pearl, who was the Journal's South Asian bureau chief. The son of a clothing merchant, Saeed is believed to have links to Jaish-e-Mohammed _ the Army of the Prophet Mohammed _ a radical group banned last month by President Pervez Musharraf.

U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin has appealed to Musharraf to hand Saeed over to the United States for trial.

Saeed confessed in court last month that he abducted Pearl, but has since withdrawn the statement, which was not made under oath and is considered inadmissible.

The case against Saeed relies heavily on the testimony of taxi driver Nasir Abbas, who told police he drove Pearl to a restaurant in Karachi the night the reporter disappeared and saw him shake hands with Saeed.

Other evidence includes e-mails that showed photographs of Pearl in chains that were traced to three of the defendants and a videotape received by the U.S. Consulate in Karachi that proved Pearl had been slain. Quereshi said he would call 31 witnesses, including FBI agents, to bolster his case.

Naveed Ahmed, the lawyer for the three alleged accomplices in custody, has said the government's case was fabricated. He said he would move to have two of his clients retract their confessions, arguing they were tortured.

``The charges presented by the prosecution are very weak,'' he said.

Saeed told Judge Arshad Noor that he doesn't trust lawyers and he would not hire one to defend him.

A U.S. federal grand jury in New Jersey indicted Saeed in Pearl's death on March 14. Since the kidnapping resulted in the reporter's murder, Saeed could face the death penalty if brought to the United States and convicted.

Officials said the charges were brought in New Jersey because the e-mail messages that laid the trap for Pearl were routed through the Journal's e-mail system in South Brunswick, N.J.

The U.S. indictment alleges that Saeed trained at Afghan military camps and also fought with Taliban and al-Qaida fighters last September and October as the war in Afghanistan was beginning.

The case is seen as a test of Pakistan's commitment to crack down on Islamic militants in cooperation with the United States' war on terrorism. Violence has surged in this South Asian country of 147 million since Musharraf announced the crackdown Jan. 12.