Posted on 05/28/2004 4:19:31 PM PDT by Cinnamon Girl
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - An al Qaeda-linked Pakistani wanted in the murder of U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl was behind two attempts to kill President Pervez Musharraf in December, intelligence officials said Friday.
Musharraf, a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terror, was unharmed in the attempts on December 14 and December 25, but 15 people died in the latter, including the two suicide bombers.
Intelligence officials said investigators had linked the attacks to Amjad Hussain Farooqi, a key suspect in the 2002 murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
Farooqi, still at large, is also the alleged mastermind of a bloody suicide bombing of the U.S. consulate in Karachi in 2002.
Friday, the Pakistani paper The News quoted security officials as saying Farooqi had had direct contacts with al Qaeda's Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks arrested in a Pakistani army major's house in the city of Rawalpindi near Islamabad last year.
It said he trained two dozen Air Force technicians from Rawalpindi's Chaklala Air Force base for the first attack on Musharraf and recruited the bombers who carried out the second.
The News quoted its sources as saying that the technicians spent two days strapping C4 plastic explosive to pillars of a road bridge in the city of Rawalpindi near Islamabad before the December 14 attack, unnoticed by police or military intelligence officials supposed to watch the route of Musharraf's motorcade.
The bomb exploded moments after his car crossed the bridge.
Investigators traced the origin of the explosives to al Qaeda in Afghanistan, The News said.
Al Qaeda has vowed to overthrow Musharraf and in March the president said a Libyan linked to the network was a prime suspect in the attempts on his life. He did not identify the man.
The latest reports emerged after Musharraf said in a television interview Wednesday that junior-rank army and air force personnel were directly involved in the first attempt on his life and would soon be tried by a military court.
Musharraf said the mastermind of the attacks was a Pakistani. He did not name him, but vowed he would be caught.
The News said the plotters used suicide bombers in the December 25 attack after learning that Musharraf's car was fitted with jamming devices to block remote detonation.
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It said the bombers got information on the route of Musharraf's motorcade from a police station in Rawalpindi and help from a staff member at Rawalpindi prison.
"Amjad Farooqi, alias Imtiaz Farooqi, alias Haider, alias Mansoor Hussain is now the most wanted man in Pakistan," the paper quoted an official as saying. "We need to catch him to break the back of al Qaeda and terrorism in Pakistan."
Police and intelligence agents narrowly missed Farooqi in Karachi, Faisalabad and Quetta in recent weeks, The News said.
An intelligence official told Reuters Farooqi had been spotted in Lahore in the second week of May. He said several raids were conducted but had failed to catch him.
Pakistani officials say Farooqi, who is in his 30s, is a friend of the British-born militant Sheikh Omar who was sentenced to death for Pearl's murder.
Farooqi is a native of Toba Tek Singh district in Pakistan's Punjab province, and residents of his home village say he joined militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir in 1988 and recruited about 200 Pakistanis to fight U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2001.
Officials have linked Farooqi to several banned militant groups, including Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami and Jaish-e-Mohammad, both of which have had members arrested in connection with attempts to kill Musharraf.
They say he once served as a bodyguard to Maulana Azhar Masood, a militant linked by India to a suicide attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001 that brought India and Pakistan to the brink of a fourth war.
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
Pakistan police on the job! Get it?
Send in Inspector Clouseau.
Did you get a chance to read Levy's book on Pearl?
Find the islamic pig, along with those responsible for Nick Berg's beheading, and kill them slowly and painfully. I personally want to see the islamic murderers without their heads. Retribution!!!!!!
No, but I heard Levy interviewed on Dennis Prager and I really want to read the book. It's on my list.
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