A Pakistani court on Thursday commuted the death sentence of Omar Saeed Sheikh who was convicted of killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.
Sheikh's sentence has been reduced to seven years of imprisonment while the court acquitted the three other co-accused in the case, as reported by Pakistani media.
“The court has commuted Omar’s death sentence to a seven-year sentence,” Khawaja Naveed, the defence lawyer told reporters. “The murder charges were not proven, so he has given seven years for the kidnapping,” said Naveed outside the Sindh High Court.
Naveed added that Sheikh has already served 18 years in jail and he would soon be released.
Pearl traveled to Pakistan after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and was kidnapped in Karachi in 2002. A video showing Pearl's decapitation was later delivered to the US consulate in Karachi.
Sheikh was convicted shortly afterwards along with three others -- Fahad Naseem, Syed Salman Saqib and Sheikh Muhammad Adil. The three accomplices were sentenced to life imprisonment by an anti-terrorism court.
In 2011, an investigation led by Pearl's former Wall Street Journal colleague Asra Nomani claimed that the wrong men were convicted for Pearl's murder.
The report claimed the reporter was murdered by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, one of the plotters of the September 11 attacks, not Sheikh.