A portrait of the late Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Photo: Reuters / Ian Waldie.
The main umbrella organization representing US Jewish groups has declared itself “disgusted” with the decision of a court in Pakistan to release four men accused of orchestrating the 2002 kidnapping and murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl.
The Wall Street Journal reporter’s gruesome death by beheading at the hands of Islamist terrorists was captured on video, and included Pearl saying the words, “My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish,” moments before he was killed.
In a statement on Thursday, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (CoP) condemned the ruling of the High Court in Sindh, Pakistan.
“We are disgusted by the decision of the Sindh High Court in Karachi, Pakistan to release Ahmed Omar Sheikh and three others involved in the barbaric killing of American Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl z”l in 2002,” the CoP statement asserted. “It is unconscionable for these murderers to go free.”
The statement noted that the decision to release Pearl’s killers came in the same week that a court in Buenos Aires, Argentina acquitted Carlos Telleldin — the individual charged with supplying the truck that was used in the deadly terrorist bombing of the AMIA Jewish center on July 18, 1994, in which 85 people were murdered and more than 300 wounded.
“This outrage comes as a federal court in Argentina chose to acquit Carlos Telleldín, a key suspect in the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) in Buenos Aires that claimed the lives of 85 innocent people who were targeted simply because they were Jews,” the CoP said.
The statement concluded: “The grievous injustice of these actions cannot stand; there must be a global outcry in response to this abject disregard of true justice and the denigration of life and especially of Jewish lives. All who believe in human dignity must forcefully condemn these decisions, and call for their swift appeal and reversal.”
