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Pakistan court frees Islamist accused of killing U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl

By Syed Raza Hassan

KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) - A panel of three judges of Pakistan's Supreme Court ordered on Thursday the release of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, an Islamist accused of beheading U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl, a government lawyer said.

"By a majority of two to one, they have acquitted all the accused persons and ordered their release," a provincial attorney general, Salman Talibuddin, told Reuters in a text message.

Sheikh, the main suspect in the 2002 kidnapping and murder of Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter, had received the death penalty.

(Writing by Asif Shahzad; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)