Suspect Arrested in Connection to Daniel Pearl Murder

[Heidi]

Source: Wall Street Journal

AUGUST 1, 2009, 5:02 P.M. ET

Associated Press
Police officials said Saturday they had arrested a member of an outlawed al-Qaida-linked group that was suspected of involvement in the 2002 beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Rao Shakir, a purported member of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba, was arrested on the outskirts of Islamabad late Friday, a police official said.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is a banned Sunni Muslim militant group linked to both the Taliban and al-Qaida and has been blamed for killing scores of minority Shiites across Pakistan.

Its members have been accused of attacks against Westerners in Karachi, including Pearl's killing and the September 2008 truck bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad.




Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124915977265599161.html

[onestepforward]

1. This is good news. n/t

[Tangerine LaBamba]

2. Good -

this is how "The War On Terror" should be fought - shoe leather, good, old-fashioned police work, cultivating snitches, infiltrating groups, all the spy stuff we learned from John LeCarre and the other novelists.

The War On Terror is NOT a ground war, and our troops in the Middle East are fighting and dying in an empty cause. Their deaths are meaningless because what they're being ordered to do is meaningless.

What a fucking waste. I am so disappointed in Obama with his Afghanistan moves.

And the military keeps on getting rid of gay linguists because, you know, they're just unacceptable, aren't they?

Jesus, this world is fucking upside-down...............................

[SeriousEbony]

9. Yet no shoe leather or rubber on American streets protesting these wars

It's as if our soldiers stopped dying in Iraq and Afghanistan after November 2008. Even here at DU the
stories or ours dying overseas drop like an aerodynamic rock at 32 fps **2.

Silence is not the answer.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

12. No draft, no risk, no noise -

that's about it.

Pretty horrible. My generation had the draft hanging over it, and we stopped a war.

This one - pfffffffft. They're not enlisting, so they don't care..................

[tavalon]

3. Let me guess

It's the number two guy in the al qaida militia. Man, I would just hate to have that job - it's almost as bad as being an admiral under Darth Vader.

[Amos Moses]

4. Being #2 in Al Qaida is more dangerous than being

the drummer for Spinal Tap.

[EFerrari]

5. Shorter gig than that ensign that beams down with Kirk and Spock.

[shadowknows69]

7. You guys are bad. And I'm worse for knowing all those references.

[shadowknows69]

6. If true, pretty amazing work

I suspect DNA from the killers would have been abundantly present on Daniel's body.

[ohio2007]

10. Congress wants results in exchange for $$$ nt

[cosmicone]

8. Some lowly, expendable scapegoat being sacrificed by

Pakistan to continue American aid flowing while the real culprits in Pakistani military and ISI are sipping cognac, laughing about it.

As long as Pakistan exists, this will continue forever.

[struggle4progress]

11. The Pearl investigation was a botch from the beginning:

KARACHI, Pakistan, Feb. 5 (UPI) -- Pakistani police Tuesday admitted they had arrested the wrong man in their search for missing American journalist Daniel Pearl, but then named two other people as the main suspects. "We believe that Mohammad Hashim Qadeer and Mohammad Bashir are the prime suspects in this case. We are still looking for them," a police spokesman told reporters in Karachi ...
But on Tuesday police changed their position and said they made a mistake in identifying the suspect. "The man we have arrested is not Hashim. It is somebody else," the spokesman said, adding that "Hashim remains the chief suspect but he is still at large. We hope to catch him and Bashir soon." Police insiders blame faulty interrogation techniques of the Pakistani police for mistaking another man as Hashim. They say police in Pakistan use excessive physical torture while interrogating a suspect, often forcing him to own up what he has not done ...
Feb. 5, 2002 at 10:27 AM
Pakistan police arrest wrong suspect
http://www.upi.com/Security_Industry/2002/02/05/Pakistan-police-arrest-wrong-suspect/UPI-81321012922854/

... U.S. diplomats and law-enforcement officials worked behind the scenes to persuade Pakistan to hand Sheikh over to the United States ... Administration officials began pressuring Pakistan to hand over Sheikh immediately after the grand jury moved against him. And on Jan. 9, U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin met with Pakistan’s foreign minister in Islamabad, to plead the U.S. case ...
Exclusive: Federal Grand Jury Set to Indict Sheikh
U.S. officials are eager to try the main suspect in Daniel Pearl’s murder. But how will they get him out of Pakistan?
By Daniel Klaidman
Newsweek Web Exclusive
updated 6:31 a.m. ET March 13, 2002
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3067249/

The Bush administration is confident that Ahmed Omar Sheikh, who is on trial here for the abduction and murder of the American journalist Daniel Pearl, will be convicted and executed, and is therefore not demanding that he be extradited to the United States, according to Pakistani officials and Western diplomats. ''He will be hung here, as a matter of policy,'' a Western diplomat said about Mr. Sheikh. ''The courts here are not eminently neutral, you know -- that's a reality'' ...
Diplomats Expect Conviction in Pearl Case
By RAYMOND BONNER
Published: Friday, May 10, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/10/world/diplomats-expect-conviction-in-pearl-case.html

Hyderabad, Pakistan - British-born militant Sheikh Omar denied in court on Friday charges of kidnapping and murdering US journalist Daniel Pearl, lawyers said. "He denied all charges against him," chief prosecutor Raja Qureshi told journalists after defence lawyers opened their case for four men accused of the abduction and grisly killing. Omar (28), the chief accused, also disowned a statement he made in Karachi in February, while Pearl was still missing, that the Wall Street Journal correspondent was already dead ...
Pearl suspect denies charges
2002-06-21 14:59
http://www.news24.com/News24/Archive/0,,2-1659_1202810,00.html

... Former Pakistani President, Pervez Musharraf, in his book In the Line of Fire stated that Sheikh was originally recruited by British intelligence agency, MI6, while studying at the London School of Economics. He alleges Omar Sheikh was sent to the Balkans by MI6 to engage in jihadi operations. Musharraf later went on to state, "At some point, he probably became a rogue or double agent" ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Omar_Saeed_Sheikh

Three weeks ago, I resigned as editor of Pakistan's most influential English daily, the News. My proprietor had directed me to apologize to the chiefs of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) for my decision to publish details of a confessional statement by Omar Saeed Sheikh, the prime suspect in the abduction and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. I was the first local journalist Danny contacted last year when he arrived in Karachi to cover Pakistan, and America's war against terror, the latest dimension of which was seen in Sunday's attack on a church in Islamabad. Never lacking for audacity, the ISI first broke into our newsroom on Feb. 17 to detect our story on Sheikh, in which he linked the ISI directly to his involvement in last December's terrorist attacks on India's Parliament. With such embarrassing information coming from one of their own kind -- Sheikh had, after all, turned himself in for interrogation to his former ISI handler on Feb. 5, a week before Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, visited Washington -- the regime's principal information officer called me at 1 a.m. and demanded I pull the piece. When his coercion failed, my proprietor in London was called. He tried to stop publication, but failed, and the next day the government pulled all its advertising -- accounting for over half our income -- in an effort to silence my paper completely. Then they asked the owner to sack me, as well as three other senior journalists ...
By SHAHEEN SEHBAI
http://pakistanpunch.pk/punch11.html

January 1, 2000-September 11, 2001
Saeed Sheikh Lives Openly in Pakistan, Strengthens Ties with ISI
... After being released from prison at the end of 1999 (see December 24-31, 1999), Saeed Sheikh travels to Pakistan and is given a house by the ISI. He lives openly and opulently in Pakistan, even attending “swanky parties attended by senior Pakistani government officials.” US authorities conclude he is an asset of the ISI. Amazingly, he is allowed to travel freely to Britain, and visits family there at least twice. He works with Ijaz Shah, a former ISI official in charge of handling two militant groups; Lt. Gen. Mohammed Aziz Khan, former deputy chief of the ISI in charge of relations with Jaish-e-Mohammed; and Brigadier Abdullah, a former ISI officer. He is well known to other senior ISI officers. At the same time that he is working closely and openly with the ISI, he is also strengthening his links with al-Qaeda (see 2000) ...
Summer 2000: Saeed Sheikh Frequently Calls ISI Director
... In 2002, French author Bernard-Henri Levy is presented evidence by government officials in New Delhi, India, that Saeed Sheikh makes repeated calls to ISI Director Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed during the summer of 2000. Later, Levy gets unofficial confirmation from sources in Washington regarding these calls that the information he was given in India is correct. He notes that someone in the United Arab Emirates using a variety of aliases sends Mohamed Atta slightly over $100,000 between June and September of this year (see June 29, 2000-September 18, 2000 and (July-August 2000)), and the timing of these phone calls and the money transfers may have been the source of news reports that Mahmood Ahmed ordered Saeed Sheikh to send $100,000 to Mohamed Atta (see October 7, 2001) ...
http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?the_isi:_a_more_detailed_look=saeedSheikh&timeline=complete_911_timeline

... Later in 2002, a Karachi antiterrorism court sentenced the British-born Sheikh to death. It sentenced three other men - Salman Saqib, Fahad Naseem and Sheikh Adil - to life in prison for involvement in Pearl's murder ...
Mar 19, 2007 21:44 | Updated Mar 20, 2007 0:46
Pearl's family questions terrorist's confession
By STEVE LINDE AND AP
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1173879123755&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

... Notwithstanding claims by Pakistan of Indian links to the kidnapping of US journalist Daniel Pearl, a key suspect in the case has said he had provided 'invaluable services' to Pakistan's security service agency in the past. The suspect, Syed Mubarrak Ali Gilani, told interrogators that besides having provided invaluable services to Pakistan's secret services, he received half a million dollars annually in donations from abroad. Pakistan daily The News reported on Friday that Gilani, a Rawalpindi-based millionaire militant who surrendered to the police two days ago pleading ignorance about Pearl's abduction, gave names of the security officials he knew for an independent verification of the claims. To back his claims, Gilani during his interrogation at Rawalpindi requested the senior police investigators for permission to call his contacts in the government. The police dismissed the disclosures as not having any relevance to the present case. "There is no need to cross-check the sensitive information," a police official said ...
Suspect in Pearls case claims links with Pak secret service, other officialsPublication: Rediff on Net
Date: February 00, 2002
http://www.hvk.org/articles/0202/8.htm

A suspected Islamic militant was charged in Pakistan with plotting to abduct Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was killed after his 2002 kidnapping in Karachi. The suspect, Mohammed Hashim Qadeer, could be sentenced to death if convicted, a top police investigator said ...
Suspect Is Charged in Daniel Pearl's Abduction
August 17, 2005
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/aug/17/world/fg-briefs17.7

... What do we make of this public disclosure of Mohammed's "confession?" It comes at a time when a growing scandal in the Justice Department and setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan has the Bush Administration reeling ... The Guardian reported that his long list of terror operations -- most of which failed -- were greeted "with shock and skepticism in almost equal measure." The NY Times downplayed their concerns near the end of their story on page A23 saying matter-of-factly, "It is not clear how many of Mr. Mohammed's expansive claims were legitimate" ... An American editor wrote to me, "I am deeply troubled by the reports of Mohammed's confession. It strikes me that it is a tidy resolution to a much larger problem. How convenient that we have all the questions answered in one somewhat disheveled package ...
How True Are the Confessions of a Terror Mastermind?
By Danny Schechter, MediaChannel.org. Posted March 20, 2007
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0316-22.htm

AMY GOODMAN: Jane Mayer, you actually begin your piece “The Black Sites” with a phone call that Alberto Gonzales made to Mariane Pearl, the widow of Danny Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and executed ...
JANE MAYER: Well, she was somewhat taken aback, because the Attorney General called her in, you know, 2007—I guess it was just this spring, in March, and said, you know, “Good news. We’ve got good news. And we’re just about to feed the wires and let them know the good news,” which was that they’ve gotten a confession in her husband’s murder from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was in US custody. And what was weird to her was just that she had been called several years earlier with the same news from Condoleezza Rice, who had told her this secretly already ...
AMY GOODMAN: In fact, as you write, someone else had already been convicted of the abduction and murder of her husband Daniel Pearl.
JANE MAYER: Oh, yeah. I mean, the circumstances surrounding that case are just such a mess ... Danny Pearl was a friend of mine and many other people who worked at the Wall Street Journal ... I think we all would like to see some kind of justice done in the case. And instead, you’ve got somebody in Pakistan who’s been convicted, who’s confessed to the murder at one point, then took back the confession. You’ve got a bunch of accomplices who have been handled in incredibly weirdly suspicious ways. And then you’ve got this sudden confession from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed ... When you use these kinds of coercive techniques, you get information, but you don’t necessarily get good information ... So any defense lawyer defending Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is going to say, “Well, everything he said was said under torture, and you can’t believe any of it, and his rights have been violated so you should, you know, free him” ....
August 08, 2007
The Black Sites: A Rare Look Inside the C.I.A.’s Secret Interrogation Program
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/8/8/the_black_sites_a_rare_look

KARACHI, Pakistan -- An Islamic militant wanted in the murder of American Journalist Daniel Pearl was killed Wednesday in a shootout with Pakistan police who were trying to arrest him, officials said. Authorities also announced the arrest of a suspect in the deadly bombing near the U.S. Consulate in Karachi two years ago. The actions mark the latest in a series of high profile arrests and killings of militant suspects wanted for terrorist attacks in Pakistan since its military leader, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, made the Muslim country a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terror in late 2001. Asim Ghafoor was fatally wounded as gunfire erupted as police and intelligence agents moved in to arrest him at a hideout west of Karachi, said Javed Shah Bokhari, deputy inspector general of Karachi police. Ghafoor was wanted in the January 2002 kidnapping and killing of Pearl, a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal ...
Pakistan police shoot Pearl abduction suspect
Updated Thu. Nov. 18 2004 6:10 AM ET
Associated Press
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20041118/pearl_militantkilled_20041117?s_name=Autos&no_ads=

Washington, Nov 12 <2007> (AFP) A Pakistani businessman suspected of playing a role in the 2002 brutal killing of American journalist Daniel Pearl died earlier this year, shortly after being interrogated by US and Pakistani intelligence, The Wall Street Journal reported today ... The newspaper said Karachi businessman Saud Memon became a key suspect in the case because he owned a nursery where Pearl had been held captive. Citing an unnamed senior US law enforcement official, the report said Memon was interrogated by both US and Pakistani intelligence services. The interrogation produced information that Memon was helping Al-Qaeda develop anthrax strains, the newspaper said ... Memon's family members and human rights groups said that in April, the businessman was left in front of his Karachi home badly injured and emaciated, weighing just 36 kilograms, according to the report ...
Suspect in Pearl's killing dies after interrogation: Report
http://www.indopia.in/India-usa-uk-news/latest-news/40773/International/2/20/2