Daniel Pearl's Murder

(This is to be read in continuation of the writer's earlier articles titled TheDaniel Pearl's Case: Questions & Answers, TheMan Who Knows And Talks Too Much and PunishmentTerrorism: Questions & Answers)

The trial of Omar Sheikh and his associates in the Daniel Pearl kidnapping and murder case has begun incamera inside a Karachi jail. The media has been barred entry. However, Pakistani newspapers have reportedthat a representative of the US Consulate in Karachi has been allowed to be present during the trial.

The trial is being held under closely controlled conditions by the military regime in order to prevent OmarSheikh from making any statements regarding his involvement in the attacks on the Jammu & KashmirLegislative Assembly at Srinagar on October 1, 2001, on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi on December 13,2001, and on the security personnel guarding the American Centre at Kolkata (Calcutta) on January 22, 2002,and about his links with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda.

As a result, no authoritative account of what exactly he and the other accused told the ISI and the Policeduring their interrogation is available. However, the Police authorities of Karachi, angered over theirrepeated humiliation by the military regime, continue to embarrass the regime by leaking out copious detailsof what, according to them, he has been telling the Police ever since he was handed over to them on February12, 2002, after having been kept in the ISI's custody for a week from February 5, 2002, when he voluntarilysurrendered to the Home Secretary of Punjab, Brig. (retd) Ejaz Shah, who had served in the ISI and used tocontrol the activities of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI).

While the military regime, including Gen.Pervez Musharraf himself, continue to blame the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM)led by Maulana Masood Azhar, which was banned by Musharraf on January 15, 2002, for the kidnapping and murder,the Police authorities insist that Pearl was kidnapped and killed not by the JEM, but by the HUJI and the HUM,with the former playing a more active role.

Musharraf has so far avoided banning the HUM and the HUJI despite the fact that the HUM, which, in itsprevious incarnation as the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA), was designated by the US State Department as a foreignterrorist organisation in October,1997, was a signatory of bin Laden's first fatwa of 1998 against the US andwas a founding member of bin Laden's International Islamic Front For Jihad Against the USA and Israel. Boththe HUM and the HUJI have been fighting against the coalition troops in Afghanistan and have sustained largecasualties. Both these organisations, and particularly the HUJI, have a large number of supporters in thelower and middle levels of the Pakistan Army.

The Police suspicion on the HUJI and the HUM is based on the modus operandi (MO) followed by the kidnappersfor killing Pearl---cutting open the throat and then beheading---which, according to them, is not used by anyother terrorist organisation in the Jammu & Kashmir State of India, Pakistan or Afghanistan and on theknown HUJI/HUM background of some of the dramatis personae.

Among the dramatis personae named by the Police as belonging to the HUJI/HUM are Omar Sheikh himself,Mansur Hasnain alias Imtiaz Siddiqui alias Hyder, Amjad Hussian Farooqui, Muhammad Hashim Qadir alias Arif andMohammad Bashir. The Police quote Omar Sheikh as saying that Mansur Hasnain, a Pakistani Punjabi from the TobaTek Singh District of Punjab, was the leader of the HUM group, which had hijacked an Indian Airlines plane toKandahar in December,1999, to secure the release of Maulana Masood Azhar and Omar Sheikh.

According to the Police, Amjad Hussain Farooqui, also a Pakistani Punjabi, belongs to the HUJI. The"News" of February 16, 2002, quoted a Pakistani Police officer involved in the investigation assaying as follows on Farooqui: ": " He is a jehadi who has been mainly active in Afghanistan, but helives in Karachi. The HUJI is the main Pakistani backer of the Taliban. About 1,800 of its 5,000 members werekilled in northern Afghanistan during the US-led air strikes and the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance offensive.The HUJI members are believed to be part of a network of cells involved in the kidnapping. The operation wasplanned very intelligently, using cells unknown to each other."

It is said that Muhammad Hashim Qadir alias Arif, a resident of Bhawalpur, whom Pearl met first, belongedto the HUM. Pearl was keen to meet Mubarik Ali Shah Gilani, leader of the Jamaat-ul-Fuqra (JUF), a terroristorganisation based in the USA and the Caribbean with a large following among Afro-Americans. Two of Gilani'sfour wives are stated to be Afro-Americans. Pearl wanted to talk to him about Richard Reid, the so-called shoebomber.

Mohammad Bashir is described as the man with whom Pearl was in touch through E-Mail from Mumbai (Bombay).Interestingly, Bashir reportedly used the E-Mail identity "Nobadmashi", meaning "NoHanky-panky". Some Police officers suspect that it was probably Omar Sheikh himself , who was in E-Mailcontact with Pearl under the assumed name Mohammad Bashir.

Omar Sheikh has told the Police that the kidnappers operated in three groups. Omar himself and Arif won theconfidence of Pearl. Mansur Hasnain and Amjad Hussain Farooqui kidnapped Pearl and kept him in custody andOmar, with the help of Adil Mohammad Sheikh, a member of the staff of the Special Branch of the Sindh Police,and his cousins Suleman Saquib and Fahad Nasim arranged for taking the photograph of Pearl in custody, havingit scanned and sending the E-Mail with his photograph to the media and others making their demands. Accordingto the Police, Saquib and Nasim belonged to the JEM, thereby indicating the possibility that the kidnappingand murder might have been jointly planned and carried out by the HUJI, the HUM and the JEM.

However, in his statement, Nasir, the driver of the taxi by which Pearl went to the Metropole Hotel inKarachi on January 23, 2002, has reportedly told the Police that he stopped his taxi near the hotel where acar with four persons was waiting. He has identified Omar as the person who got out of the car and took Pearlinto the car. Pearl willingly sat in the car, thereby indicating that he did not suspect any trap.

Two prominent personalities from the USA, not belonging to the world of terrorists, who figure in thestatement made to the Police by Khalid Khwaja, a retired Air Force officer who had worked in the ISI till 1988and who was reportedly in touch with Osama bin Laden, are Mansur Ijaz, an American lobbyist of Pakistaniorigin, and James Woolsey, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a close personalfriend of Ijaz.

Khwaja, who is related to Gilani, is reported to have told the Police that Ijaz and Woolsey had been intouch with him since September 11, 2001, and had sought his assistance for persuading Mulla Mohammad Omar, theAmir of the Taliban, to hand over bin Laden to the USA for trial. In the beginning of January,2002, Pearl hadrung him up and sought his assistance for meeting Gilani. Pearl told him that Ijaz had recommended that he(Pearl) should contact him (Khwaja). Khwaja claimed that he had turned down Pearl's request.

According to the statement of Khwaja, he came to know after the murder of Pearl that the Newsweekwas going to carry negative references to him (Khwaja) in its report on the murder. He immediately rang upIjaz and conveyed his concern to him. Khwaja alleged that Ijaz rang him up later and told him that he hadpersuaded the Newsweek to tone down, if not delete the references to him.

Did Ijaz tell Khwaja that Pearl was Jewish and that his parents were Israeli nationals? Did the interesttaken by Ijaz in helping Pearl meet well-informed people in the world of terrorism in Pakistan and hisperceived proximity to Woolsey create fears in the minds of the terrorists and the ISI that Pearl was beingused by the CIA to smoke out bin Laden and collect information about bin Laden's continuing contacts with thePakistani military-intelligence establishment?

Important questions, but they remain without answers. The only thing one knows for certain is that the ISItried hard to prevent the media from publishing the leakages from the Police about Ijaz and most paperscomplied with the ISI advisory.

In conclusion, some quotable quotes from the News, a prestigious Pakistani daily, whose Editor wasgot sacked by Musharraf for publishing a report about the confessions of Omar Sheikh about his involvement inthe terrorist incidents in India and who has since fled to the US fearing a threat to his life from the ISI:

• "A ranking police official said that while Omar's interrogation and supporting evidence were breakingthe Police hopes of resolving the mysterious kidnapping saga, uninterrupted encouraging reports were beingsent from Islamabad to President Pervez Musharraf in Washington."-- The News of February 15, 2002.
  
  
• "Omar told his investigators that on February 5 he turned himself over to Brig (retd) Ejaz Shah, theHome Secretary of Punjab, who took him to some non-Police officials, who decided to hold back the announcementof his surrender till President Musharraf reached Washington on February 12. While Omar didn't hesitate for aminute in providing the Police an explicit account of his involvement in Pearl's abduction, Policeinvestigators were surprised that he was not prepared to give any details about his week-long negotiations inPunjab with non-Police officials. Omar said: "I know people in the Government and they know me and mywork, but it was not a factor in Pearl's kidnapping or my decision to turn myself over to theauthorities."--The News of February 15, 2002.
  
  
• "Soon after surrendering before the Police in Rawalpindi, Pir Gilani had boasted about hiscontribution to several issues relating to national security and provided more than a dozen names of servingand retired officials for verification of his contribution to state security. Surprisingly, all main suspectsin the Pearl kidnapping case are making similar claims."-- The News of February 14, 2002.
  
  
• "Despite mounting evidence of Pearl's murder that has emerged soon after Sheikh Omar's decision toturn himself over to the authorities, top officials in Islamabad kept President Musharraf, who was in the USA,in the dark about the depressing developments in the case. Briefing the President on February 13, theofficials said that they were sure that Pearl was alive and that they were about to arrest all theperpetrators of the kidnapping."---The News of February 26, 2002.