Daniel Pearl and the body of evidence

Every year, as we enter a New Year, my mind goes back to Daniel Pearl, the Mumbai-based American correspondent of Wall Street Journal, who met with a brutal end to his young life during a visit to Karachi in January 2002 to enquire, inter alia, into the suspected Pakistani links of international jihadi terrorists.

In his keenness to find out the truth, Pearl fell into a treacherous trap laid by a mixed group of Pakistani terrorists belonging to different organisations and orchestrated by Omar Sheikh, a British resident of Pakistani origin, who had participated in the so-called jihad against the Serbs in Bosnia before shifting to India. He was arrested in India on a charge of involvement in kidnappings for ransom to help the terrorists in J&K.

He was one of those released by the Government of India in December 1999 to meet the demands of a group of terrorists belonging to the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) of Pakistan, who had hijacked an Indian aircraft to Kandahar, then under the control of the Taliban. The HUM is one of the founder members of Osama bin Laden’s International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad Against the Crusaders and the Jewish People floated in February, 1998.

After his release by the Indian authorities, who in a shocking submission to the terrorists handed him over to the Taliban, he crossed over into Pakistan and started helping the IIF. He opened an office at Lahore to help Al-Qaeda in its fund collection and other activities.

He revisited Kandahar shortly before 9/11 and met Osama bin Laden. Shortly after the kidnapping of Pearl and before his murder, Omar Sheikh surrendered to a former official of Pakistan’s ISI, who was then posted as the Home Secretary of the Government of Punjab at Lahore.

The ISI kept him in its custody for some days without making an announcement of his surrender. It then transferred him to the custody of the Lahore Police, who, in turn, handed him over to the Karachi Police. During his interrogation by the Karachi Police, he was reported to have admitted not only his role in the kidnapping of Pearl, but also in the planning of the explosion outside the J&K Legislative Assembly in October, 2001, and in the attack on the Indian Parliament at New Delhi on December 13,2001.

He also reportedly stated that during his visit to Kandahar to meet bin Laden before 9/11, he had come to know of Al Qaeda’s plans for the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US. He reportedly claimed that on his return to Pakistan from Kandahar, he had met Lt.Gen. Ehsanul Haq, then Corps Commander at Peshawar, and conveyed this information to him.

Shortly after the kidnapping of Pearl and before his decapitated dead body was found, Pakistan’s military dictator President General Pervez Musharraf had gone on his first bilateral visit to the US since he seized power in October, 1999. During his stay in Washington DC, he was kept informed by the ISI of all developments relating to Pearl. He concealed the true facts of the case from the US public. He sought to give the false impression that Pearl was still alive so that the positive atmosphere surrounding his visit was not damaged.

Shortly after his return to Pakistan, the ISI announced the discovery of the dead body of Pearl. A video recording made by the perpetrators of his murder showing how his throat was slit was also found. This was the third instance in South Asia in which this modus operandi, which has become the trademark of the Pakistani jihadi terrorist organisations, had been used. The first was in the case of a Western tourist to J&K, who had been kidnapped by the HUM, then known as the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA), in 1995 under the name Al Faran.

The second was on board the hijacked Indian aircraft as it was being taken to Kandahar in December, 1999. The HUM hijackers asked all the business class passengers to shift to the economy class, separated a newly-wed Hindu boy from his young wife, took him to the business class, slit his throat, and sat around him as he bled to death and kept reading from the Holy Koran.

Pearl’s brutal death was the third instance. Since then, there have been many more such instances and this trademark killing of the Pakistani jihadi terrorists has been adopted by the Abu Sayyaf of southern Philippines and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Amir of Al Qaeda in Iraq. The Salafis of Algeria had been using it for many years.

The accomplices of Omar Sheikh in the kidnapping and murder of Pearl were arrested by the police and all of them prosecuted before a court of law. Some of them were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment and some others, including Omar Sheikh, were awarded the death penalty.

The State as well as the accused went in appeal against the sentences. The State has demanded the death penalty also for those sentenced to only imprisonment. Omar Sheikh and his accomplices awarded the death penalty have challenged it. It has been nearly three years now since the appeals were filed. There has been no progress in the hearing of the appeals due to repeated adjournments of the hearing under some pretext or the other. It is said that there have been 40 such adjournments so far.

Both Nawaz Sharif, when he was the Prime Minster, and Musharraf had repeatedly amended the Anti-Terrorism Act in order to prevent the terrorists from resorting to such delaying tactics. Musharraf himself had repeatedly used these provisions to pre-empt the efforts of terrorists to delay trials. He had never hesitated to send to the gallows terrorists sentenced to death. The latest example was in respect of some military personnel sentenced to death for their involvement in the attempts to kill him in December, 2003. He got them quickly executed without a moment’s hesitation.

He seems to feel that an Omar Sheikh dead will be more dangerous to him than an Omar Sheikh alive. Or, to put it differently, he seems to feel that an Omar Sheikh alive might be more useful to him in his attempts to keep himself sustained in power than an Omar Sheikh dead. Why?

In the meanwhile, Omar Sheikh is as active as ever from the jail keeping in touch with jihadi terrorists not only in South Asia, but also in the UK and other countries of Europe. Last year, through his lawyers and with the connivance of his jailers, he had statements disseminated all over Pakistan and Afghanistan condemning the US for the alleged desecration of the Holy Koran by the US guards at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Well-informed sources in Pakistan claim that two of the perpetrators of the London explosions of July 7,2005, had met him in jail during their visit to Pakistan and that it was he, who had motivated them to launch the terrorist strike in London.

To find out the truth about 9/11, the brutal murder of Pearl , the London explosions, the violent anti-US demonstrations in Afghanistan and many other incidents, it is important to have Omar Sheikh brought out of Pakistan and interrogated by independent non-Pakistani investigators.

Since 9/11, Musharraf has, without a moment’s hesitation, co-operated in the rendition to the US of many brutal terrorists from Pakistan. According to one estimate, about 300 Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists and terrorist suspects had been flown out of Pakistan by the CIA, with the help of Musharraf. The more prominent among them were Abu Zubaidah, Ramzi Binalshibh, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and Abu Faraj al-Libbi. According to Musharraf’s own statements, Abu Faraj was the Al Qaeda mastermind of the two attempts to have him (Musharraf) assassinated in December, 2003. One would have, therefore, expected Musharraf to have retained him in Pakistani custody and questioned in order to identify other military personnel involved in the plot. He did not do so. Instead, he handed him over to the US.

There are only two instances in which Musharraf has fiercely rebuffed suggestions for similarly handing over suspects to the US or the international community —the cases of Dr AQ Khan, the so-called father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb, and Omar Sheikh.

In the case of AQ Khan, the reasons for Musharraf’s fears are clear. Under interrogation by foreign experts, he might have exposed the role of the late Zia ul-Haq in the transfer of military nuclear technology to Iran and of Musharraf in the transfers to Libya and North Korea.

What is Musharraf afraid of — if it is fear — in the case of Omar Sheikh? If Omar Sheikh knows some deadly secrets about the involvement of Musharraf himself, all the latter has to do is to have the appeal dismissed by the court and have Omar Sheikh executed quickly. That would have been the end of the fear. Why is he not doing it?

Anyone finding the answers would be making a remarkable contribution to solving one of the biggest mysteries of the so-called war against international jihadi terrorism.

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai)

"Danny" Pearl left India, where he was based, for Pakistan, to write an article about the jehad in Kashmir. Saw too much. Hence was finished by Pakistan's ISI- the womb the Taliban was born in.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28814

Daniel Pearl's executioners

Posted: September 3, 2002
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Ahmar Mustikhan

© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com

They are called "angels," sarcastically, in Pakistan, because they indulge in dirty acts but come out clean in the end. They play the keystrokes, albeit discreetly, in politics, both domestic and regional, as well as international – as recent events have proved. An invisible government – a state within a state – if one may. They have traditionally worked as the eyes and ears for the Pakistan army – the world's seventh largest. They are one of the world's most dreaded secret service: Inter Services Intelligence of Pakistan, more infamous by its acronym ISI.

Successfully convincing the entire world they have no idea where bin Laden and Mullah Omar have gone, much before ISI's genesis and rise into prominence during the Afghan war in the 1980s, under orders from top soldiers, Pakistan spooks have had a long history of political assassinations and executions. Thousands of skeletons line their cupboards. It's almost an open secret, none dare to speak about in Pakistan.

One of the first to fall prey was the country's first premier Liauqat Ali Khan. The mysterious death of the sister of Pakistan's founder, Fatima Jinnah, suffocation to death of yet another former premier, Hussein Shaheed Suhrawardy, at his Beirut hotel room, and shooting to death Benzair Bhutto's brother like a wild dog outside his home while she was still the prime minister. These are just a few.

All this comes to my mind as I ponder the macabre, cloak-and-dagger assassination of prominent U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl.

Pakistan's master spy agency Inter Services Intelligence – the angels – is feigning innocence over the dastardly murder, and the latest leak is the executioners were Yemenis. Circumstantial evidence surrounding Pearl's Gestapo-style execution tells a different story.

Intriguingly, most of the world's premier media blamed only "rogue" elements within the ISI, as if the hands of the "real" ISI were clean. For instance, on Feb. 11, Newsweek reported, "The Pakistani president is unpopular in some quarters – including, ominously, among certain officials of Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI – for backing the Americans against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan and trying to crack down on extremist groups in his own country."

Even that Newsweek story made it pointedly clear that there was more to it than meets the eye: "If the kidnappers were standard-issue Islamic extremists, the demand for the F-16s didn't seem to make much sense. Warplanes for the Pakistani Air Force are useless to guerrilla jihadists." Aptly, the Newsweek story highlighted the role of a former aide and pilot of bin Laden, Khalid Khawaja. "Khawaja is an intriguing figure in the mystery because he has also worked for the ISI, Pakistan's very powerful spy agency," Newsweek reported.

The American public, mostly focused on things that happen within U.S. borders, seems to have acquiesced. For the people in the U.S. and rest of the civilized world, Pearl was a respected journalist from a top U.S. newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. Period. But not in Pakistan, a nation held hostage even today under the shadow of bayonets.

For the ISI, especially, Pearl's profile matched that of an "enemy agent." As a journalist from Pakistan, I can reasonably assure the world that Pearl's first major "sin" was that he was Jewish. His second major "sin" was he was stationed in Mumbai, commercial capital of Pakistan's arch-foe India. These two factors themselves would have made the security managers – the angels – work overtime and keep a close tab on his itinerary.

But, of course, the cardinal sin was that he was trailing al-Qaida's links in Pakistan. In other words, Pearl was knocking at ISI doors. It would be naivete bordering on absurdity, to believe that the ISI was not monitoring each and every move of Pearl from the very moment he landed on Pakistan soil. Any intelligence outfit worth its salt would have done just the same, considering an "enemy agent" was in the fields.

As a journalist myself, who has written on sensitive issues, I know this for sure. Back in Pakistan, those in the know of how the "system" works – including my brother who was an army captain – had warned me to be careful "otherwise you would vanish into thin air, traceless." I was wise to have informed the Freedom Forum about my fears, and luckier still to escape to U.S. safety when things went bad.

In fact, in my asylum petition to the Immigration and Naturalization Service last fall – I am now a political refugee in the USA – I had said those who write objectively out of Pakistan are dubbed either an American or an Indian or an Israeli agent. Those words, my own, rang in my ears when Pearl's captors first called him a CIA agent, then a Mossad agent. Beyond an iota of doubt, Pakistan's angels had "marked" Pearl. That's how they work.

To those angels, the man convicted of Pearl's murder – the "mastermind" – was not a stranger either. Rather one of their own. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who according to a CNN October report had bankrolled $100,000 to main 9-11 terrorist Mohammed Atta on ISI instructions. That bankrolling led to the ouster of the then ISI chief Lt. Gen. Mehmud Ahmed, the key general who brought Musharraf into power – and regarded by many as more powerful than Musharraf himself in the army hierarchy.

Omar Sheikh was a soldier sans frontier, who had participated in the jihad in Bosnia and Kashmir, where he was specifically assigned to kidnap foreigners – ideally Americans – but was arrested and sentenced after a shootout in India. Omar, was deemed important enough to be one of the three militants to be freed from India's maximum security Tihar jail in exchange for over 155 passengers aboard an Air India plane that was hijacked to Kandahar – coincidentally, headquarters of the disbanded Taliban and safest sanctuary of al-Qaida until a month after 9-11 – on the eve of the new millenium.

Intriguingly, the methods employed by those hijackers were repeated by the 9-11 terrorists. The penultimate jihad of Sheikh Omar, prior to Daniel's kidnap-slaying, was his role in the storming of the Indian parliament last December, allegedly on ISI instructions. With the angels good wishes, Omar played a key role in this operation despite the fact that the U.S. authorities had more than a month earlier, requested Omar's extradition to the United States.

But this was just the tip of the iceberg. ISI sleuths pressured Pakistan's largest selling English newspaper, The News, to stop the top English editor of The News, Shaheen Sehbai, from publishing Omar's confessions. The Feb. 16 report was filed by Kamran Khan, who is noted for his solid sources within the spy establishment, and who also reports for the Washington Post. After the report was published, all government ads to The News were frozen on Feb. 18.

Those who were doing it to Editor Sehbai were not certain "rogue elements," but highest ISI officials loyal to the Musharraf government. "Physically threatened," maverick Editor Sehbai flew to U.S. safety just three days after Pearl's slaying videotapes made international headlines. Even before that, while the FBI and police in the Southeastern province were feverishly working to track down the suspects, now convicted killer Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was comfortably in the "protective custody" of the highest security official of Pakistan's governing province of Punjab, home secretary Brigadier Ijaz Shah. That home secretary was Omar's mentor and was in charge of ISI's Kashmir desk a few years earlier.

The "mystery" of Daniel Pearl's killing, may never be fully solved if the convicted killer and suspected ISI operative Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh remains in Pakistan, dead or alive. Here, too, there is an anomaly: While Pakistan has helped the U.S. capture al-Qaida fighters – including Pakistani nationals – and send them to Guantanamo Bay, Omar remains an exception. Different even from Ramzi Yusuf and Aimal Kansi, who were swiftly handed over to the United States. A "sacred cow," who the angels may sacrifice only in Pakistan.

Ahmar Mustikhan can be contacted at ahmar_reporter@yahoo.com.

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