Strongly believe there needs to be accountability for people who take others' lives: UN on Omar Sheikh's commutation

The United Nations on Thursday said people who take the lives of others must be held accountable, responding to a Pakistani court overturning the death sentence of British-born top al-Qaeda leader Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was convicted in the abduction and murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl.

"I have no specific comment except to say that obviously we stand against the use of the death penalty. We do, however, strongly believe that there needs to be accountability for people who take the lives of others, especially in this case the life of a journalist," Stephane Dujarric, Spokesman for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, said at his daily press briefing.

Dujarric was responding to a question on whether the UN had any comment on the Pakistani court overturning Sheikh's murder conviction.

The Sindh High Court found 46-year-old Sheikh guilty of the lesser charge of kidnapping and commuted his death sentence to seven years in prison. Sheikh has been in jail for the past 18 years.

A two-judge bench, headed by Justice Mohammad Karim Khan Agha, acquitted three others -- Fahad Naseem, Salman Saqib and Sheikh Adil -- serving life sentences in the case.

Pearl, the 38-year-old South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, was abducted and beheaded while he was in Pakistan investigating a story on the alleged links between the country's powerful spy agency ISI and al-Qaeda.

Sheikh, who was the mastermind behind abduction and killing of Pearl, was arrested from Lahore in February 2002 and sentenced to death five months later by an anti-terrorism court.

The incident came three years after Sheikh, along with Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, was released by India in 1999 and given safe passage to Afghanistan in exchange for the nearly 150 passengers of hijacked Indian Airlines Flight 814.

He was serving prison term in India for kidnappings of western tourists in the country.