HYDERABAD PRISON AND KARACHI, PAKISTAN — The investigation into the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl is far from over. There are 11 suspects. Four were sentenced just last week, three to life in prison, one to death. If Pakistani police are to be believed, another four are in custody and will be charged formally, "as soon as it is expeditious for the authorities to do so," according to Raja Qureshi, the advocate general of Sindh (which includes Karachi, where the killing took place) and chief prosecutor in the case. At the moment, Qureshi is on a Caribbean cruise, elated by a verdict many thought was a rubber stamp.

Although there is a verdict and Karachi has not yet descended into chaos, there are still several remaining questions — not the least of which is whether the prosecution has the right men. So let’s take a look at the back-story.

Almost two weeks ago now, Pearl’s killers were sentenced on a Monday morning that brought something to the streets rarely experienced in Hyderabad: quiet. Forget the pin; assembled reporters could hear the ubiquitous Pakistani dust settle in the sweltering midsummer heat. About 40 correspondents stood outside the prison speaking in hushed and sober voices. A crowd of curious Pakistanis stood cordoned off about 100 feet away, staring warily at Kalashnikov-toting police. Gone were the squawking street vendors, the musical horns of motorized rickshaws blaring "Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina," the gaggle of street urchins looking for money.

This was it. We were all waiting. Waiting to hear about what would happen to the people accused of being Pearl’s killers and captors. Some of my colleagues arrived in Hyderabad the night before and stayed in local hotels. Instead, I flew to Karachi and made the two-and-a-half-hour drive up to Hyderabad in the morning. The prosecutor flew from Karachi to Hyderabad in a military helicopter.

The Pakistani government’s believed that if there was going to be violence, it would erupt at the jail in Hyderabad. But most foreign journalists hadn’t been particularly happy about being in Karachi either — they wondered about terrorist attacks linked to the verdict.

For some reason, standing there looking at all the Pakistani police in riot gear and machine guns (which they felt the need to twirl on their fingertips), I thought of a vice-consul in the American embassy who once commented on the nuclear scenario, "[Pakistan and India] are like two crazy-ass children in a sandbox, and it’s such a stupid thing that they might just do it." Later that night, I would learn that while we were inside the prison at the press conference, one of those crack Pakistani guards standing outside blew off his hand as he twirled the AK-47 around his fingertips. Darwin was right.

But we were still standing outside the prison, waiting, and I was still hoping that those guards had the safeties on all their guns.

Kathy heard it first.

Kathy Gannon is the local Associated Press bureau chief who’s widely regarded as the dean of foreign correspondents in Pakistan. She took a call, walked away, and then, turning to catch my eye, made a slicing motion across her throat with a finger and mouthed the words, "Death sentence, Omar. Others, life." Later I’d reflect that the slicing motion was perhaps poor form. But sentimentality is the first thing Westerners lose in Central Asia.

We stood outside the prison for another half-hour after Kathy gave me the sign. They finally let us in — 30 Pakistani journalists were climbing over each other to get through a one-person doorway — and that, just to get visitors’ passes for the prison. They almost crushed the poor officer sitting at a card table handling the passes. Eventually the Pakistani guards were overwhelmed and just let us in.

There was more chaos at the tent when Qureshi came out to give his statement. After drinking Johnnie Walker Black Label until 11 p.m. with Qureshi the night before, getting a good quote wasn’t what worried me — I just needed what passed for the facts: all four men were found guilty. This was no surprise. Omar Shaikh, widely regarded as the brains among the four who stood in the dock, received the death sentence for his involvement. The three men who were named as his co-conspirators received 25-year sentences. That was a surprise. Most believed that they would all hang together. For some reason the judge thought that only one person needed to die, and defying the Pakistani Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997, he refused to sentence them all to death; instead, in addition to slapping them with long sentences, he fined them each the equivalent of approximately $41,000. One hanging was sufficient.

When I asked a friend of mine clerking in the judge’s chambers why the judge condemned only one man, my friend, who decided to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, said, "Well, the accused are all men of very good character, and Daniel Pearl was a Jew — the prosecution never refuted the contention that he was Mossad [Israeli intelligence]."

Okay, so clemency doesn’t always come from the best intentions.

THERE ARE some countries where the legal system is taken seriously, and there are others where justice is front-loaded. Most poor and developing nations are in the latter category, and if the O.J. Simpson trial is any indication, so is America. Once the government decides your number is up, just say your prayers and hope that the rope snaps your neck on the way down. By the same token, people from prominent families with a lot of money can get away with murder. It would appear that since Omar Shaikh had neither O.J. Simpson’s money, nor Ted Kennedy’s connections, being in the wrong place at the wrong time proved fatal.

That the accused would be convicted was never in any doubt. Pakistan is a military dictatorship, after all, and all the judges are appointed by the president. And the president of Pakistan has a new friend in Uncle Sam, and Mr. Musharraf wasn’t about to spoil that newfound friendship over a few mujahideen who have outlived their purposes — assuming that Shaikh’s friends would never survive a fraction of their 25-year prison sentences.

It’s just as well, then, that on Tuesday, Qureshi asked that the sentences for Fahad Naseem, Syed Salman Saqib, and Shaikh Muhammad Adil be "enhanced" to the death sentence. When I asked my new drinking buddy why he asked for a revised sentence, Qureshi shrugged, smiled, and said that the judge, "ought not to have awarded a lesser sentence — the accused persons do not deserve a lesser punishment."

Fair enough. But what if the prosecution doesn’t have the right people? What if a country is so against foreigners (Omar Shaikh is a native of Britain) and so protective of its own people that the prosecution just can’t deliver the goods? After another four fingers in the glass, Qureshi fessed up: "They play for keeps — so do we. Besides, he was a terrorist and while it might exist in America, there’s no such thing as innocent life here in Pakistan."

In a land where kids get their first Kalashnikov at 12, Qureshi just might have a point. As the conversation dragged on, he was clear that there was no way to be sure they had the right men. But that was no reason to stop a swift prosecution when General Musharraf needed one.

In fact, despite the overwhelming insufficiency of the evidence — the only link between Shaikh and Pearl’s killing was that Shaikh was the last person to be seen with Pearl the night of his disappearance — Musharraf got his prosecution. But is that justice?

The evidence linking the accused to the commission of the crime is largely circumstantial; a laptop used to e-mail photos of Pearl in captivity was found, for example, but there is only a tenuous link between it and the defendants. When the chief prosecutor says that the evidence is at best suggestive rather than conclusive, the prosecution has problems. And when the culture of a country has been bound up since the mid ’80s with a version of Islam that created the Taliban and Kashmir jihadi groups, can there be much question about the source of the problem?

So, then, is Pakistani justice a question of cultural politics?

While the parallels have not been explicit, the feeling on the streets of Karachi seems to be that Omar Shaikh’s trial in Pakistan seems to be directly parallel to O.J. Simpson’s trial in California.

So slippery are the cultural politics in the Pakistani criminal-justice system that Pearl’s widow, Marianne Pearl, hired an attorney in Karachi to represent her interests during the trial, and she selected him almost solely on the basis of his connections to the local judiciary — to the tune of about $30,000 — a vast sum in Pakistan.

Compounding the bench’s cultural issues is the country’s authoritarianism. After speaking with some of Qureshi’s colleagues, I found the consensus to be that what the Pakistani government can’t remedy from the bottom up, it will fix from the top down. Pakistanis have a lot of experience with command and control management structures — this isn’t the country’s first military dictatorship, after all.

But another prominent lawyer, and former advocate general and judge on the high court of Sindh, offers a different perspective. According to M.L. Shahani, "the only reason why they prosecuted Omar Shaikh is because he was the last person seen with Daniel Pearl. That provides evidence of possibility, but the law doesn’t execute on possibility." It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the prosecution is perhaps the most important trial of Musharraf’s reign. Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was tried and sentenced to three years hard labor last week — and it barely made headlines.

When I asked Shahani about the prosecution, he also said, "My father once told me that it is important to have ambitions, but it is wrong to be ambitious. Qureshi is ambitious — draw your own conclusions." Ambitious men are always looking to do more powerful men favors.

Conversation with Qureshi is itself suggestive. According to Qureshi, the Daniel Pearl trial "is the most important prosecution I have ever made, even more important than Sharif." (Nawar Sharif was a former prime minister of Pakistan who attempted to fire Musharraf — Musharraf responded by taking over the government and firing Sharif. Of course, by that time Sharif had escaped Pakistan and is now living very comfortably in Saudi Arabia.)

It was an interesting conversation to have, sitting as we were in the Karachi Marriott — a hotel bombed just a couple of months ago to protest American involvement in Afghanistan. Apparently, no one has any leads in that particular investigation.

The question remains: does it accomplish anything to execute a man for a crime he may not have committed, though he may be a criminal himself?

While many Americans, perhaps, wouldn’t mind executing all people with links to terrorist organizations, that’s not how our judiciary system works, and, more important, it’s not the kind of witch-hunt that would seem prudent in countries attempting to build democratic political cultures. The United States herself only barely survived McCarthyism.

President Musharraf is in a much more difficult position in Pakistan than the Senate was "under" McCarthy. He’s promised elections in October and has been busy pushing through secularizing reforms in the meantime. Joint elections between Muslims and non-Muslims, the new requirement that all candidates must possess bachelor’s degrees, and term limitations are all laudable reforms. They have cost him dearly in popularity, and in the end they may prove unworkable. Musharraf has already withdrawn the minimum-education requirement for politicians, and joint elections are also in jeopardy.

Not only has the Pearl prosecution cost Musharraf dearly, but there’s no confidence that he jailed the right people. Instead, those who fund people like Omar Shaikh will be better placed to take over Pakistani politics.

And that’s not something that would comfort the Daniel Pearl I knew in Peshawar.

Andrew Bushell reports from Central Asia for a number of publications, including the Economist. He has written articles on Pakistan's slave trade and the future of Afghanistan for the Phoenix.