Source:
APKARACHI, Pakistan – The four men imprisoned for killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl were not present during his beheading but were convicted of murder because Pakistani authorities knowingly relied on perjured testimony and ignored other leads, says a report released Thursday.
The results of the Pearl Project, an investigation carried out by a team of American journalists and students and spanning more than three years, raise troubling questions about Pakistan's dysfunctional criminal justice system and underscore the limits U.S. officials face in relying on Pakistani authorities.
The four men convicted in the killing did help kidnap the American journalist, according to the investigation. But it says forensic evidence known as "vein-matching" bolsters the confession of al-Qaida No. 3 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the professed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, to having killed Pearl.
The report says at least 14 of 27 people involved in abducting and murdered Pearl in 2002 are thought to remain free. And the four who have been convicted could be released if their appeal is ever heard because of false and contradictory evidence used in their trial.
Read more:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110120/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan_daniel_pearl
(The AP article is a long one with a lot of details, as is the one below)
New Details About Daniel Pearl's MurderSource:
The Daily BeastA 3 1/2 year investigation into the kidnapping and murder of the American journalist shows that 27 men were involved in the crime—and 14 of them remain free on the streets of Pakistan.
Almost nine years ago, on January 23, 2002, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped off the streets of Karachi, Pakistan, brutally killed a week or so later, beheaded, and chopped into 12 pieces. In July 2002, four men were convicted of Pearl’s murder, including mastermind Omar Sheikh and three men involved in sending out ransom notes to the world. Pakistan closed the case. The U.S. let the case go dormant, with one FBI agent told by his boss, “Let sleeping dogs lie.
In “
http://treesaver.publicintegrity.org/daniel_pearl">The Truth Left Behind: Inside the Kidnapping and Murder of Daniel Pearl,” a 3 1/2 year investigation by the Pearl Project, reveals that, in fact, justice was not served. Leads weren’t followed. Suspects weren’t interviewed. And alleged co-conspirators weren’t prosecuted. The truth was left behind. The Pearl Project is a faculty-student investigative reporting project at Georgetown University published by the Center for Public Integrity. What we uncovered is a tangled web of militancy, extremism, and terrorism in Pakistan. What we’ve learned is that there were 27 men involved in the crime. Of those men, 14 remain free on the streets of Pakistan, one of them allegedly making suicide vests in Waziristan.
A window into “the Punjabi Taliban” that threatens Pakistan today, the case reveals the dangerous nexus between the militancy in Pakistan and al Qaeda. It offers many lessons in trying to understand Pakistan, from the rule of law to the use of Karachi as a safe haven for militancy and the draw of extremist Islamic interpretation, such as Deobandism, to young men described in our report as “sons of darkness.”
More details and embedded links:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-01-20/daniel-pearl-murder-pearl-project-investigation-reveals-new-details-/full/The Pearl Project's homepage:
http://pearlproject.georgetown.edu/
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
