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Pakistan's Supreme Court has ordered the release of four Islamist militants convicted and later acquitted in the gruesome beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl in 2012. The court also dismissed an appeal against the militants - including British-born Ahmad Saeed Omar Sheikh who had been on death row - by the Wall Street Journal reporter's family. Sheikh, Fahad Naseem, Syed Salman and Muhammad Adil were found guilty of the abduction and murder of the journalist in 2012.

Barely a month before the 9/11 terror attacks, two Pakistani nuclear scientists, said to be close to disgraced Abdul Qadeer Khan, met up with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and offered to supply him with atomic weapons, according to a newly released book. Chaudiri Abdul Majeed and Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, who held a series of senior posts in Pakistani nuke programme, went to Taliban [Images] headquarters in Kandahar in mid-August 2001 and spent three days with bin Laden who was keen on acquiring weapons of mass destruction, the book says. In fact, Mahmood was said to be more close to...

Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen has released the following statement: “We understand that Pakistani authorities are taking steps to ensure that Omar Sheikh remains in custody while the Supreme Court appeal seeking to reinstate his conviction continues. The separate judicial rulings reversing his conviction and ordering his release are an affront to terrorism victims everywhere. We remain grateful for the Pakistani government’s actions to appeal such rulings to ensure that he and his co-defendants are held accountable. If, however, those efforts do not succeed, the United States stands ready to take custody of Omar Sheikh to stand trial here....

Family, provincial government appealing acquittals to Supreme Court of Pakistan as provincial high court says there is no justifiable reason for their continued detention. [Islamabad] A top Pakistani provincial court has ordered the immediate release of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and his three alleged co-conspirators in the brutal murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl in February 2002. Sheikh, a British national of Pakistani origin, was sentenced to death the same year for killing Pearl, but his conviction was overturned by a Pakistani court in April. He is likely to go free on Saturday. The Sindh High Court, located in Karachi,...

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Sheikh was acquitted earlier this year of murdering Pearl, but has been held while Pearl’s family appeals the acquittal. Sheikh was sentenced to death and the others to life in prison for their role in the plot. But in April, the Sindh High Court acquitted them, a move that stunned the U.S. government, Pearl’s family and journalism advocacy groups. Sheikh was convicted of helping lure Pearl to a meeting in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi, in which he was kidnapped. Pearl had been investigating the link between Pakistani militants and Richard C. Reid, dubbed the “Shoe Bomber” after...

Pakistan’s Supreme Court made the right call last week, ensuring that one of the killers of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl won’t walk free — at least not for now. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheik’s been on death row since 2002 for orchestrating the kidnapping and beheading of Pearl. But a local court this year ruled he’s only guilty of the lesser charge of kidnapping and re-sentenced him to seven years, which would spring him now. Pearl’s family appealed the decision, and the high court has now agreed to delay any release while it considers the arguments, which will take...

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Slain U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl’s parents have petitioned to the Pakistani Supreme Court seeking to overturn a ruling that freed four men who had been convicted in 2002 of involvement in his killing, their lawyer said on Saturday... “A bare perusal of the entire record would reveal that there was a plethora of incriminating evidence, both forensic as well as oral, which proved that murder was committed and that all the accused persons aided and abetted the murder,” the appeal petition said. Islamist militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a Briton of Pakistani origin who was sentenced to...

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Pearl, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was abducted and beheaded in Karachi. A video of Pearl’s decapitation was delivered to the US consulate there. Sheikh was sentenced to death in 2002. A report released by the Pearl Project at Georgetown University has claimed that the wrong men were convicted for Pearl’s murder. Instead, the investigation says Pearl was murdered by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

The murder conviction of a British Pakistani man found guilty of the 2002 kidnapping and killing of journalist Daniel Pearl was overturned by a court in Pakistan on Thursday. The sentence of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was reduced to seven years in prison for the charge of kidnapping. His lawyer, Khwaja Naveed, says it was expected those years would count as time served. Saeed had spent 18 years in prison in southern Hyderabad on death row. The court also acquitted three others -- Fahad Naseem, Sheikh Adil, and Salman Saqib -- who were accused in the case and had been...

Police in New York Tuesday announced the arrest of four suspects in an alleged terror plot. They described the plan to attack a group of Muslims in central New York state as serious and real. Brian Colaneri, 20; Vincent Vetromile, 19; Andrew Crysel, 18; and a 16-year-old suspect whose name is being withheld, were arrested Friday in the town Greece. "If they had carried out this plot, which every indication is that they were going to, people would've died," said Chief Patrick Phelan. Investigators said the suspects, who knew each other from the Boy Scouts, were targeting Islamberg, a rural...

When Kathy Griffin released her now-infamous decapitated Donald Trump photo, even her own mother renounced the publicity stunt. “She said, ‘I am not with you on this one, Kathy. You’ve gone too far,'” Griffin recalled to The Hollywood Reporter of her 97-year-old mother’s reaction to the notorious snapshot. “It’s been really hard,” said Griffin’s boyfriend, Randy Bick, adding that his own brother, a former Marine, unfriended him on Facebook after the incident. “It seems like everybody turned.” Despite the reaction from her own loved ones, Griffin, 57, wasn’t convinced the photoshoot was a mistake until pal Rosie O’Donnell reportedly asked,...

Some intelligence agencies warn the five men may travel to Syria and make use of its chaotic landscape to plot attacks elsewhere. Iran has released five senior al Qaeda operatives from detention and will soon allow them to leave the country, prompting fears they will join other terrorists in Syria planning attacks on the West. According to intelligence sources, three of the five are members of al Qaeda's ruling committee the Shura Council. Among those released in exchange for the Iranian diplomat was Abu al Kheir al Masri - the former head of al Qaeda's "external relations" committee, who was...

This is a horrifying development. There are at least 22 active terror cells INSIDE the United States. This is according to an actual FBI map, not just some lunatic fringe, conspiracy theorist. Jamaat ul-Fuqra, which runs the camps, is an Islamic fundamentalist organization related to Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organizations. To make matters worse, the “FBI states that their hands are tied in monitoring their activities despite a training video that is years old, possible murders, and proof of illegal activities.” These are not brand-new camps either. Homeland Security has known about them for years.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power tweeted early Monday morning that, “Daniel Pearl’s story is reminder that individual accountability & reconciliation are required to break cycles of violence.” Pearl is the Wall Street Journal reporter who was abducted in Pakistan four months after Sept. 11, 2001. Al-Qaida leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed slit Pearl’s throat and sawed his head off on camera, after forcing the reporter to read that “My name is Daniel Pearl. I’m a Jewish American from Encino, California, U.S.A. … My father’s Jewish, my mother’s Jewish, I’m Jewish. My family follows Judaism. We’ve made numerous family...

‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ Was this Samantha Power baffling Daniel Pearl tweet evil or stupid? Samantha Power@AmbassadorPower Daniel Pearl's story is reminder that individual accountability & reconciliation are required to break cycles of violence. @DanielPearlFNDN

A British-Pakistani man convicted of the killing of US reporter Daniel Pearl has attempted to commit suicide in a Pakistani prison, an official said Saturday. "Omar Sheikh, a British-Pakistani, who is serving life imprisonment in Hyderabad prison, tried to hang himself with the exhaust of the prison cell late Friday," senior police official Akram Naeem told AFP. Pearl was working for the Wall Street Journal when he was kidnapped and beheaded in Pakistan in 2002.

In its first days on the air, Al Jazeera America's short commercial window has been dominated by promotions for the network itself and some direct-response ads. There are only a few national brands, including Gillette and ThermoSpas, that have bought time on the new cable news network. -snip- Procter & Gamble, parent of Gillette, did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

Al Jazeera may have a team of 1,000 journalists, a massive budget that expands coverage around the globe and a lofty goal of besting ratings king Fox News — but what it doesn’t have is a solid advertising base. The New York Postreports that when the network hits the airwaves Tuesday, it will do so with about half the normal cable news channel advertising load. It’ll have about six minutes of commercials per hour, compared to the 12-plus minutes broadcast by rivals Fox, CNN and MSNBC. Of those six minutes of commercials, about half will be in-house. Al Jazeera says...