Trial of Daniel Pearl murder trial adjourns after short session

The trial of the British Islamic militant charged with the kidnap and murder of US reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan was adjourned today after his lawyer demanded more documents from the government.

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh’s lawyer called on prosecutors to hand over copies of e-mails and photos sent to authorities announcing Pearl’s abduction. The case was then postponed until April 12.

Scores of paramilitary troops ringed the Karachi Central Jail, where Saeed, 29, and three co-defendants faced the death penalty if convicted.

Saeed, from Wanstead, east London, has already confessed to masterminding the abduction and murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter, but he was not under oath at the time and his statement is not admissible as evidence.

Relatives of the men were allowed into the courtroom, but journalists were kept well back by police.

Reporters staged a brief protest to complain about being excluded, but jail officials refused to allow them in.

Pearl disappeared on January 23 while researching links between Pakistani extremists and Londonder Richard Reid, who was arrested in December on a flight from Paris to Miami with explosives in his shoes.

A few days later, the previously unknown National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty announced his kidnapping in e-mails to US and Pakistani news organisations.

A gruesome video-tape of Pearl’s decapitation was received by US diplomats on February 21. His body has not been found.

The key break in the case came when FBI agents traced the e-mails to one of the co-defendants, Fahad Naseem, who identified Saeed as the mastermind. Saeed was arrested in February in the eastern city of Lahore.

Seven suspects remain at large, including those authorities believe actually killed Pearl.

Saeed has also been indicted in the Pearl case by a US grand jury. The Justice Department also confirmed he had been charged in a sealed indictment with kidnapping an American in India in 1994.

However, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf told Pakistani journalists last week that his government would not only prosecute Saeed but also punish him before agreeing to hand him over to the United States.

Saeed, a former public schoolboy and London School of Economics dropout, has long been associated with Islamic extremist movements, including Jaish-e-Mohammed, or Army of Mohammed, and is believed to have trained at camps in Afghanistan.

He was arrested in India and spent five years in jail without charge. He was freed in December 1999 along with two other Islamic militants in exchange for passengers and crew of an Indian Airlines jet that was hijacked to Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Fearing Saeed’s accomplices might try to rescue him, officials decided to hold the trial in a special courtroom in the city jail. Two high court judges rejected a defence motion to move the trial to an open court.

During a pretrial hearing in February, Saeed admitted involvement in the kidnapping but later withdrew the statement, which was not made under oath.

The prosecution’s case relies heavily on taxi driver Nasir Abbas, who told police he drove Pearl to a restaurant the night he disappeared and saw him shake hands with Saeed before getting into his car.

Naseem reportedly told police that he sent the e-mails on Saeed’s orders. He also said that a few days before the kidnapping, Saeed told him he was going to kidnap someone who was ‘‘anti-Islam and a Jew.’’

The prosecution plans to call about 30 witnesses, including FBI agents who worked on the case.

Khawaja Naveed Ahmed, the lawyer for the three alleged accomplices, has described the government’s case as weak.

He wants their statements declared inadmissible, claiming his clients were tortured.