Argument Over Pearl Trial Site

The trial of Muslim militants charged in the kidnap-slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl resumed briefly under tight security Friday after moving from Karachi because of prosecution fears of a terrorist attack, officials said.

But the closed-door session was quickly adjourned until Monday because of a defense appeal to the Supreme Court of Pakistan that the trial should be moved back to Karachi.

Chief Prosecutor Raja Quereshi said he told the court he was ready to call five witnesses, but he declined to tell reporters who they were.

Dozens of security officers were deployed around the colonial-era Hyderabad Central Jail compound, with sharpshooters positioned on rooftops and armored personnel carriers set up at intervals.

Defense lawyers said they thought the move, ordered by the Sindh provincial high court at the prosecution's request, was pointless.

A Karachi court on Tuesday ordered the trial moved out of the volatile commercial hub, where Pearl was kidnapped on January 23, after the prosecution said intelligence reports suggested there might be an attack on the city jail where the closed-door trial began in April.

"The prosecution's plea that the lives of the lawyers, judge and witnesses are endangered in Karachi is absurd," said Abdel Waheed Katpar, lawyer for the chief defendant, British-born Islamic militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh.

"If terrorists can blow up the jail in Karachi, they can blow up the jail in Hyderabad," Katpar said.

The daily trip - 75 miles by road east from Karachi - exposes the lawyers to further risk, Katpar told reporters outside the Hyderabad jail, where the trial was resuming in a makeshift courtroom.

Katpar also dismissed the prosecution's claim that the former judge, Abdul Ghafoor Memon, had failed to keep the defendants from threatening prosecutors. The provincial high court replaced Memon with Judge Ali Ashraf Shah when it ordered the court change.

The real reason for the move and change in judge is that "they don't have a strong case," Katpar said.

All the prisoners were moved from Karachi in a police convoy Thursday evening, said jail supervisor Mohammed Nawaz. They were put in separate cells and are being observed by closed-circuit television.

The large jail, with a series of inner walls, was built under British colonial rule in 1891 with a capacity of 1,500 prisoners, officials said. With current overcrowding, it now houses more than 2,500 prisoners.

In the first three days of the trial last week, witnesses identified Saeed as a man who made contacts with Pearl before he disappeared.

The trial of Saeed and three others accused in the kidnapping and subsequent slaying of Pearl began April 22.

The four defendants have pleaded innocent to charges of murder, kidnapping and terrorism. They face the death penalty if convicted.

A barrister acting for Pearl's wife, Mariane, applied on Tuesday to join the prosecution team, a move accepted by the court, defense lawyer Khawaja Naveed said.

Reporters are barred from attending the trial, but lawyers and family members of the accused are allowed to sit in the courtroom.

Pearl disappeared in Karachi in January while researching links between Pakistan's militants and Richard C. Reid, the man arrested in December on a Paris-Miami flight with explosives in his shoes.

A previously unknown group — the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty — sent e-mails to the newspaper in January revealing it had kidnapped Pearl.

A videotape received Feb. 21 by U.S. diplomats in Karachi confirmed Pearl, 38, was dead. His body has not been found.