ISLAMABAD—The parents of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl asked Pakistan’s Supreme Court to prevent the men convicted 18 years ago of his abduction and murder from going free after a lower court last month overturned those verdicts.

Ruth and Judea Pearl filed their petition at Pakistan’s top court to hear their appeal after the government of Pakistan also last month sought reinstatement香蕉视频苹果下载 of the original convictions in the case.

Mr. Pearl, the Journal’s bureau chief for South Asia, was reporting on extremism in Pakistan in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when he was abducted and killed in January 2002.

Early last month, a court in Karachi overturned the murder conviction and death sentence handed down in 2002 to Omar Sheikh, who had been convicted under specialized terrorism laws for organizing the kidnapping. It reduced his sentence to seven years simple kidnapping, making him eligible for release. That court also absolved the three men convicted of being accomplices in 2002, ending their life sentences.

“Today, my wife and I filed an appeal to the Supreme Court of Pakistan to overturn the “acquittal” of our son’s murderers,” Judea Pearl said Saturday in a public message on Twitter. “We ask all people of conscience to support our efforts to protect journalists from imitators of Omar Sheikh and his ilk.”