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T V Parasuram in Washington
Ten days before four men charged with the abduction and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl are scheduled to go on trial, Pakistani prosecutors and police officers investigating the case say they are "almost empty-handed".
They admit that they have little evidence linking the defendants to the crimes, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday quoting officials.
"So far, there is nothing to connect these four suspects with Danny's murder," a police officer in Karachi said.
Two of Pakistan's best-known criminal lawyers have been retained to defend the men who have been charged with abduction, murder and terrorist activities, the daily said.
A report on the probe concludes that the evidence is so fragile that the defence team will trounce the prosecution, a senior government official said.
"We have no eyewitness to Danny's kidnapping, torture or murder," one official said. "It is like going to court almost empty-handed."
Neither Pearl's body nor any of his clothing has been recovered, the Post said. Nor has a murder weapon been found. Police have not identified who the actual killers are.
"At the outset, the court would like to examine the weapon used in the murder or any related material such as bloodstained clothing of the victim or the search report from the scene of the crime. The police have nothing to offer in response to these questions."
Prime suspect Sheikh Omar Saeed, a British-born militant, said in a preliminary court appearance last month that he helped plan Pearl's abduction. Last week he claimed that the police tried to coerce him into making a false confession by forcing him to sign blank papers.
The three others arrested in the case -- Salman Saqib, Sheikh Adil and Fahad Nasim -- were allegedly involved in sending emails announcing Pearl's abduction.
Police and prosecution sources are quoted as saying that much of the prosecution's case hinges on the four men's statements to the police, which defence attorneys have challenged in court.
Much of the material evidence is tied to the computer allegedly used by the abductors to send the emails. But officials said the police have no independent experts who can establish that the emails were sent from that computer.
The police said Federal Bureau of Investigation agents who assisted in the technical aspects of the case are unlikely to testify.
The prosecution's primary evidence is a three-minute digital videotape showing men slitting his throat. But investigators said the defence attorneys are likely to challenge the authenticity of the tape, which they said was poorly edited.
The police said at least seven other suspects in the case remain at large and that the investigators have no true identities or physical description of four of them.
The prosecutors, police said, have not yet persuaded any of the defendants to testify against the others to bolster the case. Saeed, after being given the privilege of talking to his father by phone from jail last week, has refused to discuss the case.
PTI
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