Judge Off Pearl Trial

A Pakistani court replaced the judge conducting the trial of British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and three other suspects in the kidnap and murder of U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl, a court official said on Friday.

Sindh provincial high court upheld the case of Sheikh Omar's defense lawyer, who argued Judge Arshad Noor Khan could be called as a prosecution witness during the trial.

Defense lawyer Abdul Waheed Katpar said Khan could be called because he heard Sheikh Omar say, while not under oath during a remand hearing when Pakistan was insisting Pearl was alive, "as far as I understand he is dead."

Raja Qureshi, the chief lawyer in the Sindh provincial government, told reporters he did not contest the change of judge.

"In order to demonstrate complete transparency and a fair and impartial trial, the state has no objection if the case be transferred to another judge, with a condition that this transfer should not delay proceeding of the case," Qureshi said.

Pearl, the Wall Street Journal's South Asia correspondent, disappeared Jan. 23 on his way to a restaurant in Karachi, the capital of Sindh Province, to meet an Islamic militant believed to have been Saeed. A few days later, e-mails sent by the previously unknown National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty announced his kidnapping and showed pictures of him in captivity.

In all, 11 people have been charged in Pearl's disappearance.

A videotape received by U.S. diplomats in Pakistan on Feb. 21 confirmed Pearl was dead. His body has not been found. Saeed and the three others were arrested before the tape was received.

Saeed, 28, has also been indicted in the Pearl case by a federal grand jury in New Jersey and was secretly indicted in the 1994 kidnapping of an American citizen in India.