Sheikh Omar hearings to be held in jail

A high court in Pakistan has cleared the deck for the trial of militant Sheikh Omar Ahmed Saeed and three of his accomplices, accused of murdering and kidnapping the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, at the Karachi central jail from tomorrow.

This was after the court rejected the request for a change of venue, and agreed with the government viewpoint that security and sensitivities of the situation had to be kept in mind.

Immediately after the decision was announced by a two-member bench comprising Sindh Chief Justice Syed Saeed Ashhad and Justice Ghulam Rabbani, principal prosecutor Raja Qureshi who is also the advocate general for the province, announced that the trial would start as planned, but thought that regular proceedings would in fact commence after about a week.

The quartet – Sheikh Omar, Salman Saquib, Fahd Naseem and Adil Sheikh – have been in custody for the last six or seven weeks, but were moved to the Karachi central jail towards the middle of March.

The police will have little difficulty in moving them from one block to the other for day-to-day trial, although Qureshi said that procedural issues like the issue of notices to lawyers and parties concerned, will be dealt with tomorrow.

It was still not clear until yesterday afternoon whether the media would be allowed to cover the proceedings. Qureshi emphasised that "it will be an open trial with reasonable restrictions", following which journalists forwarded a formal application for permission to be in the courtroom.

Whether the request will be met, was not known. Indications were that the media would have to be allowed access only up to a point and would be briefed later by the lawyers from the two sides. Or, they would have to rely on press notes from the home department.

The country's anti-terrorist law, under which the trial will be held, allows for proceedings in jails, or even in camera and for restricted attendance in the courtroom, explained the advocate general, assuring facilities to newsmen up to maximum permissible limits.

The judges did not have to write a formal order because the objection from the defence counsel, Waheed Katpar, was only of a transient nature.

Their lordships deferred till April 10, the second application in which Omar had charged the trial judge with bias. The defence had earlier tried to argue that the judge, ordering the jail trial, had given no reason to justify his decision.

Since the public and the media will have no access to the courtroom, the trial in jail will not be an open trial. Justice demanded that the accused be tried in an open court and at a place easily accessible.

He relied on the trial of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif for tax evasion and hijacking, conducted in 1999. The defence cited the example of the Murtaza Bhutto case, and the Indira Gandhi case as counter argument.

If convicted, 29-year old Sheikh Omar, a trusted lieutenant of the Maulana Masood Azhar, chief of the banned militant organisation Jaish-e-Mohammed, will face the death sentence.

He has already been indicted in the United States for a kidnapping case of 1994, but Pakistani authorities feel that Omar, who holds both British and Pakistani nationalities, ought to be tried at home first.

Officials said the law demanded the trial to end in seven days but proceedings of a similar nature in Nawaz Sharif's case took almost four months to finish.