By: (AP) Judges hearing an appeal by four Islamic militants convicted in the murder of
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl warned Thursday that they may appoint a state lawyer to represent three of the men if their chosen attorney continues to miss the proceedings.
Five appeal hearings have had to be postponed since December because defense lawyer Rai Bashir has failed to attend, prosecutor Raja Qureshi said.
The four militants were convicted in July last year for the January 2002 abduction and later murder of Pearl in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi.
Justices Ghulam Nabi Soomro and Afzal Soomro said if Bashir does not attend the next hearing on Oct. 21, they may appoint new counsel for the three men.
The fourth man, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British citizen, is represented by another lawyer who has attended the hearings.
Sheikh was sentenced to death for his involvement in Pearl's killing while the other three -- Fahad Naseem, Salman Saqib, and Sheikh Mohammed Adeel -- were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Defense lawyers are using the appeal hearing to urge the court to acquit all four men while the prosecution is pushing for all four to be sentenced to death.
Bashir told The Associated Press he missed the appeal hearings because of commitments in other courts and that he planned to attend the next hearing in October.
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