DOJ says it's ready to prosecute Pakistani man for 2002 death of Wall Street Journal reporter

Kristine Phillips, USA TODAY
·2 min read
Artist Levi Ponce poses with his Memorial Day mural project of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, near his old neighborhood in Los Angeles, California on May 23, 2015. Pearl was a Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and murdered by a terrorist group in Pakistan in 2002 while doing an investigative story. The artist is working with students from the Daniel Pearl High School and LAPD West Valley Police cadets on the project.

WASHINGTON – The Justice Department is ready to prosecute Omar Sheikh, who was previously convicted and later acquitted for the 2002 murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen said Tuesday.

The announcement from Rosen, his first as acting attorney general, came a few days after a Pakistani court ordered the release of Sheikh and three other men charged with kidnapping and killing Pearl. Sheikh, the key suspect in the slaying, was acquitted earlier this year, but has remained imprisoned as Pearl's family appeals the acquittal to the Supreme Court.

Pakistani authorities are also appealing the acquittal as well as the order to release Sheikh.

In this March 29, 2002 file photo, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the alleged mastermind behind Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl's kidnap-slaying, appears at the court in Karachi, Pakistan. On Thursday, Dec. 24, 2020, a provincial court in Pakistan overturned a Supreme Court Decision that Sheikh should remain in custody during an appeal of his acquittal on charges he murdered Pearl.

Rosen said that the rulings acquitting Sheikh and ordering his release "are an affront to terrorism victims" and that the Justice Department is ready to take the British-born Pakistani in custody so he can stand trial in the United States if efforts to reinstate his conviction in Pakistan fail.

Sheikh and three others were convicted for their role in the 2002 plot to kidnap Pearl in southern Pakistan. But a Pakistani high court acquitted them in April, the Associated Press reported.

In 2002, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft announced a grand jury indictment against Sheikh for acts of terrorism against Pearl and an American tourist who was kidnapped in India in 1994.

The indictment alleged that Sheikh, who trained in military camps in Afghanistan and fought with Taliban and al-Qaeda forces, led a conspiracy to lure Pearl to a meeting with a fictitious source in the Pakistani city of Karachi. Authorities said Sheikh used a fake identity to communicate with Pearl online and convince him to meet.

This is an undated file photo of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl who disappeared in the Pakistani port city of Karachi January 23, 2002 after telling his wife he was going to interview an Islamic group leader. The wrong men were convicted of murdering US reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and beheaded in Pakistan in 2002, and US officials stood in the way of the real murdered being brought to justice for the grisly crime, a report released on January 20, 2011 says. British-Pakistani Omar Sheikh and three other men who were convicted of killing Pearl were not even present when the Wall Street Journal reporter was murdered, says the Pearl Project report, which was led by Pearl's friend and former colleague, Asra Nomani.

Pearl's kidnappers kept him in seclusion and later videotaped his brutal killing.

Sheikh was a member of the Harakut ul-Ansar, a militant group operating in Kashmir and is tied to terrorist acts against Americans in India in the 1990s, authorities said.

Contributing: Associated Press

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Daniel Pearl: DOJ vows to prosecute Omar Sheikh for reporter's murder