US: President Bush has welcomed news from Pakistan that four militants have been found guilty of the murder and kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
"The administration welcomes Pakistan's verdict in this matter," the White House spokesman, Mr Ari Fleischer, told reporters. "Daniel Pearl was brutally executed and Pakistan's court system has now ruled. This is a further example of Pakistan showing leadership in the war against terror."
A Pakistani court yesterday sentenced British-born militant Sheikh Omar to death by hanging for abducting and murdering Pearl, while handing down life sentences to three accomplices.
Anti-terrorism court judge Ashraf Ali Shah announced the verdict in a two-minute sitting inside a prison bristling with roof-top snipers and paramilitary troops in Hyderabad, 160 km from Karachi where Pearl disappeared on January 23rd.
Omar, whose full name is Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, was ordered by the court to "be hanged by the neck until he is dead". Prison authorities said he would be moved to death row in Hyderabad jail.
Omar, Salman Squib, Fahad Nasim and Sheikh Adil were all convicted under Pakistan's Anti-Terrorism Act. The life sentences given to Omar's accomplices usually run for 25 years in Pakistan.
The defence team immediately announced an appeal and the four convicts issued venomous statements through their lawyers.
Omar threatened retaliation against the Pakistani government, which has been embarrassed by a swathe of terror attacks from Islamic militants furious at its support for the US-led war on terror.
"We shall see who will die first," Omar declared in a message read out to reporters by his lawyer Mr Rai Bashir. "Either I or the authorities who have arranged the death sentence for me. The war between Islam and kafirs [non-Muslims\] is going on and everybody should show whether he is in favour of Islam or in favour of kafirs."
Defence lawyers lashed out at President Pervez Musharraf, accusing the court of buckling to government pressure to appease the United States. "President Musharraf had already announced that he wanted the death penalty for Omar," defence counsel Mr Rai Bashir told reporters. "In view of such a statement . . . how could we expect justice?"
Relatives blamed the verdict on Islamabad's alliance with Washington. "My son is innocent but he was already condemned to death by President Musharraf before the trial even began," Omar's father Sheikh Ahmed Saeed said.
"This is not the decision of Judge Syed Ashraf Ali Shah, it is a decision of Pervez Musharraf and his master America," said Saquib's brother Hussain.
The US had sought Omar's extradition shortly after his arrest in February, both for Pearl's murder and the abduction of an American tourist in India in 1994. Islamabad refused to hand him over before having him tried locally first.
Government officials were reluctant to comment on the verdict and whether they were open to negotiate on the extradition request. "The judgment speaks for itself and you can draw your own conclusions," the interior ministry spokesman, Mr Rashid Khan, said.
Defence lawyers vowed to take their appeal all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.
Prosecutors told the anti-terrorism court that Omar, the London-educated son of a well-to-do Pakistani garment merchant, had lured Pearl into a trap by cultivating a relationship with him by e-mail before promising him an interview with a little-known Islamic militant. Pearl, then the Journal's South Asia correspondent, had been exploring the murky underworld of Pakistani militants when he disappeared.
Cities across Pakistan were put on alert for revenge attacks by Omar's supporters. Elite police troops would be stationed throughout his ancestral home city of Lahore for the next three days, officials said. Paramilitary troops in Karachi were on guard outside police and army bases and security was stepped up around foreign missions.