Appeals for convicted Pearl murderers

Sheikh Omar was sentenced to death by hanging last month

HYDERABAD, Pakistan -- A Pakistani provincial court has agreed to hear appeals in the cases of four men convicted in the slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British-born Islamic militant, was sentenced to death by hanging by an anti-terrorism court in Hyderabad, Pakistan, last month for Pearl's murder.

Three accomplices received life sentences, which in Pakistan usually means 25 years.

The acceptance of the appeals came after a preliminary examination of the appeal points presented by lawyers to the Sindh High Court on Tuesday.

Defense attorneys are appealing the sentences of Saeed Sheikh and his accomplices and want them acquitted.

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Meanwhile, prosecutors are seeking the death sentence for the three men who received life sentences from the Hyderabad court.

None of the four men convicted in the Pearl case appeared in court Tuesday.

Disappearance

Pearl disappeared in January while researching a story in Karachi about Pakistani militants and suspected shoe-bomber Richard Reid.

A few days after Pearl disappeared, the previously unknown National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty announced his kidnapping in e-mails to U.S. and Pakistani news organizations. Photographs of Pearl were attached.

A videotape of the reporter's killing was sent to U.S. officials in February. A body believed to be that of Pearl's was found in May. Police said the identification would be possible after DNA test results were released.

Three of the men were arrested after the FBI and police traced the e-mails to a laptop computer that belonged to one of them, Fahad Naseem.

Naseem confessed and said Saeed Sheikh told him three days before the kidnapping that he planned to abduct someone who is "anti-Islam and a Jew." (Timeline)

Saeed Sheikh was arrested in February in the eastern city of Lahore.

He is currently under indictment by U.S. courts over the kidnapping of American tourists in South Asia.

He was in prison in India until he was released in exchange for hostages during a hijacking of an Air India flight that ended up in Afghanistan New Years Eve 1999.

Saeed Sheikh was reported to have slipped into Pakistan after the hijacking and surfaced when he was arrested and charged with Pearl's kidnapping and murder.

He is said to have had strong links to Muslim fundamentalist groups since he dropped out of the London School of Economics in 1993.

-- CNN Islamabad Bureau Chief Ash-har Quraishi contributed to this report