ISLAMABAD, April 2 (Xinhua) -- A court in Pakistan on Thursday commuted the death sentence handed to a convict in the murder case of American journalist Daniel Pearl, who was killed in the port city of Karachi in 2002, lawyers said.

Pearl, the South Asian region bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped in Jan. 23, 2002, and later killed by suspected militants in February 2002. He was working on an investigative story about al-Qaeda group.

An anti-terrorism court had awarded death sentence to Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British national of Pakistani origin in July 2002, after he was found guilty of masterminding Pearl's kidnapping and murder.

The Sindh High Court in Karachi turned prime suspect Sheikh's death sentence into seven year imprisonment and acquitted three convicts Fahad Naseem, Syed Salman Saqib and Sheikh Muhammad Adil who were sentenced to life imprisonment, their lawyer said.

Khawaja Naveed, the defense lawyer for the accused, told reporters after the announcement of the verdict that the court has awarded seven year jail sentence to Sheikh over kidnapping charges.

He said that murder charges against Sheikh were not approved and that is why the court commuted his death penalty. He said the court acquitted the three others accused and ordered their release.

"Sheikh had been in jail for 18 years and appeal of three others accused against their conviction had been pending for 18 years," the lawyer said.