Trial in Pearl slaying reopens

The closed-door trial of a British-born Islamic militant for the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl today resumed under tight security in the Pakistan city of Hyderabad.

The trial of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, from Wanstead, East London, and three others was moved from Karachi because of prosecution fears of a terrorist attack, officials said.

Chief Prosecutor Raja Quereshi said today that he was ready to call five witnesses, but he declined to say who they were. The trial had been suspended for more than a week after Quereshi complained about the judge and security arrangements in Karachi.

Dozens of security officers were deployed around the colonial-era Hyderabad Central Jail compound, with sharpshooters positioned on rooftops and armoured personnel carriers set up at intervals.

Defence lawyers said they thought the move ordered by the Sindh provincial high court at the prosecution’s request was pointless.

‘‘If terrorists can blow up the jail in Karachi, they can blow up the jail in Hyderabad,’’ said Abdel Waheed Katpar, lawyer for Saeed.

The daily trip, 75 miles by road east from Karachi, exposes the lawyers to further risk, Katpar told reporters outside the Hyderabad jail, where the trial was resuming in a makeshift courtroom.

Katpar also dismissed the prosecution’s claim that the former judge, Abdul Ghafoor Memon, had failed to keep the defendants from threatening prosecutors. The high court replaced Memon with Judge Ali Ashraf Shah when it ordered the court change.

The real reason for the move and change in judge is that ‘‘they don’t have a strong case’’, Katpar said.

All the prisoners were moved from Karachi in a police convoy yesterday evening, said jail supervisor Mohammed Nawaz. They were put in separate cells and are being observed by closed-circuit television.

The large jail, with a series of inner walls, has a capacity of 1,500 prisoners, officials said. With current overcrowding, it now houses more than 2,500 prisoners.

In the first three days of the trial last week, witnesses identified Saeed as a man who made contacts with Pearl before he disappeared.

The trial of Saeed and three others accused in the January 23 kidnapping and subsequent slaying of Pearl began on April 22.

The four defendants have pleaded innocent to charges of murder, kidnapping and terrorism. They face the death penalty if convicted.

Reporters are barred from attending the trial, but lawyers and family members of the accused are allowed to sit in the courtroom.

Pearl disappeared in Karachi in January while researching links between Pakistan’s militants and Richard Reid, the British-born man arrested in December on a Paris-Miami flight allegedly with explosives in his shoes.

A previously unknown group - the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty - sent e-mails to the newspaper in January revealing it had kidnapped Pearl.

A videotape received on Febuary 21 by US diplomats in Karachi confirmed Pearl, 38, was dead. His body has not been found.