Prosecution’s nightmare: Re-trial apparent in Pearl case
KARACHI- Top government officials in Islamabad and Karachi have been informed that an imminent official confirmation about the recovery of the remains of Daniel Pearl and appearance of new accused persons and witnesses has created a crisis situation for the state prosecutors who may now be legally forced to present a supplementary challan of the case that will entail the re-trial of the Pearl kidnapping and murder case – already in the final stages of the trial at an anti-terrorism court in Hyderabad, senior Pakistani officials disclosed here.
Sindh police officials involved in the investigation and preparation of the case have said, their ‘ultimate desire’ to wrap-up the trial before an official confirmation on Pearl’s body is made was not likely to be met because of various ‘legal procedures’ that have to be completed during the rest of the course of the trial.
These sources informed Sunday that a confirmation from the US agencies can not be prolonged for more than a week, which meant that the remains of Daniel Pearl be handed immediately to Pearl’s parents and wife through the US officials in Pakistan.
The Sindh police Syed Kamal Shah is believed to have desired that the DNA test on samples taken from Pearl’s remains be conducted in Pakistan. Sources said that even to conduct DNA test in Pakistan, the authorities would have to soliticit technical help from the US experts as no DNA test kit was available in Pakistan. Medico legal experts and law enforcement officials said that the dental records and the DNA test doesn’t take more than 48 hours to confirm the identity of a mutilated or decomposed body. Quoting US officials US media has already reported that the remains found from a nursery garden in the outskirts of Karachi were those of Daniel Pearl. It has also been reported that Pearl’s family members have also been told that enough evidence was available to suggest that the decapitated body recovered on Friday morning in Karachi was that of Daniel Pearl.
“Recovery of the corpse delecto (body of the victim) means that the prosecution must now present a new challan under section 173 of Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), present a new list of witnesses and if the situation requires a new list of accused persons in the case,” said the former federal law minister and a leading lawyers Abdul Hafeez Pirzada in an interview on Sunday evening. He added “Under these circumstances there will be trial De Novo (fresh trial), new charges will be framed and the witnesses, even those prosecution witnesses who have already recorded their statements, will now be re-examined,” “It’s a nightmare for the prosecution that has already exposed its strategy and the witnesses to the defence,” Pirzada said.
Informed official sources said that indisposition of Marriane Pearl because of the final days of her pregnancy in Paris would prevent the prosecution from closing its case. Being the complainant in the case, Mrs Pearl’s testimony is vital for the trial. “She will have to give her detailed statement that must be followed by her cross examination by the lawyers of defendants,” said Mrs Ismat Mehdi an experienced Karachi lawyer who recently served the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) as deputy prosecutor general. “If Mrs. Pearl is to make her statement abroad, the state will have to arrange for the defence attorneys to travel, at their convenience, to the city where she will record her statement,” Mrs Mehdi said. She also said that legally speaking the investigating officer will be asked to make their statements only after the complainants’ statement.
Officials said that besides facing practical problems on the status of Mrs Pearl’s statement, here or abroad, the trial couldn’t be concluded before the defendants are given a chance to make their statements and produce their own witnesses.
“The process can easily take at least a month and no Pakistani or US medical experts can technically hold the DNA and dental x-ray results for that long,” a police official said.
Meanwhile a well informed official source has revealed that the religious militant — who had informed the police about the Gulzare Hijri site from where the decapitated body was recovered beside acknowledging his involvement in Pearl’s kidnapping and murder — had also informed the police investigators that Pearl’s body was cut into 10 pieces before burying them in a shallow grave at a nursery garden in Gulzare Hijri. This piece of precise information was found to be stunningly correct on Friday morning. The same person has also disclosed that at least three Yemeni-Baloch (Pakistani Baloch with Yemeni forefathers and family connections in Yemen) had actually helped him in the final act that involved Pearl’s slaughtering and a re-shoot of that ghastly act before a video camera at a room in Gulzare Hijri garden nursery. The two religious militant who had yielded the decapitated body of the Wall Street Journal reporter and had confessed of their personal role in the kidnapping, murder and the subsequent burial of Daniel Pearl had not been formally arrested in the Pearl case till Sunday, officials said.
This is not the first time that Sindh police investigators were facing such a crisis situation in defending its investigation in a high profile cases.
In 1999, the police investigators had arrested a new group of accused persons after some other suspects had already been challaned in the famous Hakim Saeed murder case. In the famous Justice Nizam murder case, the Karachi police had challaned an Abbottabad person as a main accused in the case without knowing that the man had died several years ago.
In separate investigations the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had determined that the accused persons challaned by the Karachi police in the cases of the murder of five Union Texas auditors in 1997 and the murder of two US consulate officials in Karachi in 1995, wrong people were tried and convicted.
Source: The News
Date:5/20/2002
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