ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The trial of four men charged with the kidnapping and murder of American newspaper correspondent Daniel Pearl moves to a new city today, after prosecutors complained of death threats from inside and outside the courtroom.
Testimony will resume before a new judge -- the third in the trial's short life -- in the city of Hyderabad, 110 miles northeast of Karachi, where Pearl was kidnapped Jan. 23. Prosecutor Raja Quereshi requested the change after four law enforcement agencies reported uncovering plans to blow up the Karachi city jail, where the trial convened last month.
Quereshi also complained that two of the defendants had made threatening gestures from behind the bars that separate court officers from prisoners in the makeshift courtroom.
"In our Eastern world, when we just put a hand on the chin and slide it down and make a box of your fist, that is understood to be a threatening gesture," Quereshi said in a telephone interview. The prosecutor told the judge that two of the defendants, Sheik Adil, a former police officer, and Salman Saquib, made such gestures in the courtroom last week. When the judge, Abdul Ghafoor Memon, did not admonish the defendants, Quereshi asked for a new judge, complaining the defendants were "beyond the control" of Memon.
A Pakistani official said the bomb threats came from Muslim militants associated with Jaish-i-Muhammad, a group whose members include Sheik Omar Saeed, the British citizen charged with planning Pearl's abduction. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, supplied no details, and police reports offered in court in support of prosecution claims remained confidential.
Pakistan's principal intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, has been close to Jaish-i-Muhammad since the years when the government actively but discreetly supported Islamic militants. When Saeed faced kidnapping charges in neighboring India in 1994, his attorneys were paid by ISI, according to another Pakistani official, who also asked not to be named.
The legal fees were paid in Britain by the ISI station chief in Pakistan's London embassy, the official said.
In addition, when Saeed emerged as a suspect in the Pearl case, he surrendered Feb. 5 in the presence of Ejaz Shah, a former top ISI official now working as home secretary of Punjab province, according to officials and a court brief filed by Saeed's wife.
Officials acknowledge that Saeed remained in ISI custody for a week while Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, visited Washington and said he was "relatively certain" Pearl was alive. Musharraf also suggested Pearl had been caught up in "intelligence games."
After Saeed's arrest was announced Feb. 12, he shocked onlookers in his first court appearance by confessing to his role in Pearl's abduction and announcing the Wall Street Journal reporter was probably dead.
In Hyderabad, an anti-terrorism judge, Ali Ashraf Shah, will pick up the case where Memon left off last week, relying on the written record to catch up. The proceedings will continue to be held in a jail and remain closed to the news media and the public.
Testimony in the case has centered on establishing that Saeed met Pearl while the reporter was researching the trail of Richard C. Reid, the Briton charged with trying to bring down a transatlantic flight on Dec. 22 with explosives concealed in his sneakers. A taxi driver testified he saw Pearl get into a car with Saeed in Karachi the day the reporter disappeared.
A videotape documenting the mutilation of Pearl's body was delivered to the U.S. Consulate in Karachi on Feb. 21. His body has not been recovered.
The prosecution still has more than 20 witnesses to call, including the FBI computer experts who tracked e-mails containing threats to kill Pearl and demanding ransom. Quereshi said Pearl's widow, freelance journalist Mariane Pearl, was one of those expected to testify. However, because she is in her native France preparing to deliver their child, her testimony will be taken by court officials in England, which unlike France has a formal judicial arrangement with Pakistan for such occasions.
All four suspects face the death penalty if convicted, as would seven others who are still being sought. Should Saeed, 28, be acquitted in Pakistan, he would face charges before a U.S. District Court in New Jersey, where he was indicted for conspiracy to commit hostage-taking that resulted in Pearl's death.
Saeed has also been indicted for his alleged role in the 1994 kidnappings in India, in which one of the captives was an American tourist.
