A Pakistani court today ordered authorities at the Hyderabad jail to provide proper facilities to the murderer of Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002.
The Sindh High Court in its order said that Ahmed Omar Sheikh, the terrorist freed by India in exchange for the hostages of the hijacked IC-814 in 2000, should be given proper facilities by the authorities in the jail.
Sheikh, a British-born Pakistani, was given a death sentence for planning and carrying out the kidnapping and beheading of Pearl in Karachi.
The order came on a petition moved by the wife of Sheikh, who has been languishing in solitary confinement in Hyderabad jail.
His wife Sadia Rauf said her husband had been denied basic facilities in his solitary death cell even though he had appealed against the death sentence.
She submitted that Sheikh is confined in the death cell in the prison since the anti-terrorism court convicted and sentenced him to death in 2002.
There was only a short interval during 2004 when he was shifted to Rawalpindi s Adiala Jail and Karachi Central Jail.
His appeal against the conviction and sentence is pending before this court and awaits determination, her lawyer said.
