Posted on 01/26/2003 8:08:15 AM PST by Happy2BMe
A suspect in the abduction, Afghan war veteran Fazal Karim, has identified Mohammed as the man who drew the knife across Pearl's throat, two men who participated in Karim's interrogation tell TIME.
Karim was detained in a Pakistani crackdown on militant groups last May, and he admitted he assisted in Pearl's abduction. During his interrogation, Karim confessed that he had helped three unknown Arabs carry out Pearl's murder. With Karim's aid, one Arab pinned the journalist to the floor while another wielded the weapon. The third videotaped the grisly act.
The two officials who grilled Karim tell TIME that when the militant was asked to identify the Arabs from a stack of photographs, he stabbed his finger at Mohammed's picture and told police it was Mohammed who handled the knife.
Now Pakistani police sources tell TIME that at least one witness says Pearl's throat was slit by a top al-Qaeda terrorist, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. A Kuwaiti of Pakistani descent, Mohammed is believed by U.S. authorities to have been a key organizer of the Sept. 11 hijackings.
Despite this fresh evidence, Pakistani police working on the Pearl case notice a distinct cooling in their superiors' interest. Saeed and his co-defendants are appealing the verdict, and Karim's testimony may weaken the government's case that Saeed was both ringleader of the plot and Pearl's executioner.
Until the Pakistani Supreme Court rules on Saeed's appeal, say police, it is doubtful that kidnapping charges will be brought against Karim, who is in custody. Meanwhile, the search is on for Mohammed, who investigators think is still hiding in Pakistan.
As far as the Pearl case goes, it's hard to tell what they're up to for sure; but I suspect they are trying to get Saeed off using Mohammed because they think that we can't get to him.
Many of the Jews who support the dissemination of this video also form a lobby in Israel who are urging Ariel Sharon not to give in to the Bush Administrations strategy of keeping Israel from retaliating if attacked by Saddam, other Arab states or terrorist groups after an allied invasion of Iraq.
Moussaoui Linked to 9/11 Mastermind (Khalid Shaikh Mohammed)
Despite this fresh evidence, Pakistani police working on the Pearl case notice a distinct cooling in their superiors' interest
It's interesting that the account of Karim's testimony has now changed:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/827792/posts
Suspect Describes Ordeal of Slain Reporter
New York Times ^ | 1/22/03 | DAVID ROHDE
Posted on 01/23/2003 1:54 AM EST by kattracksKARACHI, Pakistan — The nursery where they killed him, one year on, is oddly peaceful. Lush mango, palm and pomegranate trees are in bloom, their thick, green leaves whispering in a gentle breeze.
The cinder-block storehouse where he was executed is empty, save for some flower pots, a cot and crumpled packs of cigarettes strewn across the floor. The 10-foot by 15-foot main room still has a metal door and metal shutters that can be padlocked. Sounds of life reach the room: birds chirping and cars driving past to a nearby religious school run by Al Rashid Trust, an organization the United States accuses of financing terrorist groups.
Twelve months after Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal correspondent, was abducted, and then murdered in this nursery, which is viewable from the school's upper floors, the hard-line school and hundreds like it in Pakistan remain open.
A sense of unfinished business lingers over the case, and over Pakistan itself, as new details emerge. The Pakistani ringleaders who kidnapped Mr. Pearl have been convicted or are in custody, but three men, suspected of being Al Qaeda members, who are believed to have killed him are still at large. Pakistanis express shame over the killing, but some still believe Mr. Pearl was an American or Israeli spy. Questions persist about the seriousness of the efforts of some elements of Pakistan's powerful intelligence service to find Mr. Pearl, as well as the seriousness of the Pakistani military's effort to crack down on militancy. In December, the leader of the group whose members planned the kidnapping, Jaish-e-Muhammad, or Army of Muhammad, was released from government detention.
An Islamic militant arrested in police sweeps last May has provided new information about Mr. Pearl's abduction and execution, according to Pakistani and Western officials. The man, identified as Fazal Karim, who is suspected of being a co-conspirator in the abduction, told the police he had worked as a night watchman at the nursery.
Just after 7 p.m. on Jan. 23, 2002, Mr. Pearl got into a car outside the Village Restaurant in downtown Karachi thinking he was on his way to interview a reclusive Islamic leader who had possible ties to Richard C. Reid, the Qaeda recruit suspected of trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic jetliner with explosives in his shoes. In truth, Mr. Pearl had been lured into a trap by Ahmed Omar Sheikh, a British-born militant.
He was driven around Karachi for several hours that night, at one point changing vehicles, Mr. Karim, the watchman, told the police. Throughout the night, Mr. Pearl appeared calm, Mr. Karim said. It is not clear what Mr. Pearl saw, but during the final stretch of the ride his captors turned off a main highway heading north and drove toward the Gulshan-e-Maymar housing development on the outskirts of Karachi, which resembles an American suburban subdivision.
Little about the area would provoke alarm. At one entrance there are signs for the "elite school." At the other are signs for the "Pakistan Institute of Technology" and the "Dream World Fantasy Resort."
The captors took Mr. Pearl down a dirt road to a less-developed area nearby, stopping at the nursery. It sits in a vast field, surrounded by houses and buildings. The religious school is 500 yards in one direction. A large two-story luxury home is 500 yards away in another.
During his first week of captivity, Mr. Pearl tried to escape during a trip to the outhouse, Mr. Karim told the police. In the compound, it is easy to see why. The mud-brick fence that surrounds the nursery is only five feet tall and houses and apartment buildings can be seen in the distance.
Mr. Karim told the police Mr. Pearl's captors "roughed him up" as Mr. Pearl said he was "sorry," according to a Western official's account.
Mr. Karim also told the police that Mr. Pearl was shot in the leg, but the Western official said an autopsy found no leg wound.
On the sixth day of Mr. Pearl's captivity, three men Mr. Karim described as Arabs from Yemen arrived. "The Arabs came prepared," said the Western official. "They had a satchel, a drop cloth and assorted knives."
One spoke to Mr. Pearl in a language the watchman did not understand and the journalist's face "sort of lit up," [Hebrew?] the Western official said. "Danny seemed to get some sort of encouragement that he was near release."
Mr. Pearl was then videotaped saying: "My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am a Jew." and reading a statement criticizing the United States. "Then they put this blindfold over his head and started the execution," the Western official said.
Afterward, the Arabs ordered Mr. Karim, who claimed he was "revolted" by the killing, and the other guards to cut Mr. Pearl's body into pieces, the Western official said. The Arabs then left, leaving the Pakistanis to bury Mr. Pearl.
The journalist's body was buried in a shallow grave on the edge of the compound, near a bamboo trellis with grape vines. They placed his body parts back together and buried him face down, the Western official said. "It was very puzzling," the official said. "It was almost as if they were trying to set things right."
Pakistani officials will not comment on the new version of events or even confirm that Mr. Karim and other militants are in their custody. They are waiting until the completion of the appeal filed by Mr. Sheikh, who was convicted in July and sentenced to death for Mr. Pearl's kidnapping and murder. That process is expected to take months.
Mr. Karim and other militants arrested this spring were members of Lashkar-e-Jangvi, a militant Sunni Muslim group accused of murdering scores of Shiite Muslim doctors, police officers and businessmen. An alliance of militant groups, aided by Al Qaeda, appears to have killed Mr. Pearl and carried out bomb attacks on the American Consulate and a group of French engineers, according to Pakistani law enforcement officials.
The Pakistani police have made enormous headway in some areas. The leadership of Lashkar-e-Jangvi has been virtually destroyed in a series of arrests, shootings and an accidental explosion in a bomb-making factory, the Western official said. Sectarian killings and violence in Karachi are down. But Saud Memon, a wealthy Pakistani with ties to Al Qaeda who owns the nursery, remains at large, along with dozens of Qaeda members believed to be hiding in the country with the help of local militants.
Mr. Pearl's father, Judea, is organizing a worldwide memorial service for Mr. Pearl on Feb. 21, the date his death was confirmed.
"We ask that each synagogue that plans to conduct a memorial service invites a local church or a mosque to participate," Dr. Pearl said in a statement. "And that the service includes a statement condemning the hatred that killed Danny."
This new version now supports this story published last September:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/760327/posts
UPI Exclusive: Pearl tracked al Qaida
United Press International ^ | September 30, 2002
Posted on 09/30/2002 8:18 PM Eastern by HAL9000WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 (UPI) -- Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was investigating the man who allegedly planned the Sept. 11 airplane hijackings and attacks on New York and Washington when he was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan, according to two former Central Intelligence Agency officials. Bob Baer, a former case officer in the agency's Directorate of Operations, said he provided Pearl with unpublished information about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has since been accused by American officials of being one of the masterminds of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and a top aide to Osama bin Laden. Mohammed is currently the operational chief of al Qaida, other U.S. intelligence officials said.
Next to bin Laden, Mohammed is one of the most wanted terrorists in the world.
"I was working with Pearl," said Baer, who has written a book about his time as a CIA official and has acted as a consultant and source for numerous media outlets. "We had a joint project. Mohammed was the story he was working on, not Richard Reid."
But a spokesman for The Wall Street Journal disagreed with Baer's account. "Everything we know from before and after Danny's murder indicates his reporting effort was focused on Richard Reid. Also, we don't believe he was engaged in a 'joint project' with anyone outside The Journal."
Shortly after Pearl's kidnapping and subsequent murder in Karachi, Pakistan last winter, it was reported he was tracing the background of Reid, who was seized on a Boston-bound American Airlines jet from Paris allegedly trying to ignite explosive in his shoes. According to that account, Reid had gone to Karachi to contact a man called Sheik Mubarek Gilani to get information on Reid.
Baer said that instead Pearl was onto bigger and more dangerous game. "I urged him to go to Pakistan to look into Shaikh Mohammed."
Another former 30-year veteran of CIA confirmed Baer's account. He asked that his name not be used, but he endorsed Baer: "I'm surprised Baer is on the record, but he really knows his stuff on this."
Baer said that he believes it was Mohammed who had Pearl killed.
"I have heard from (intelligence) people who follow this closely that it was people close to Mohammad that killed him, if it wasn't Mohammed himself," he said.
Shortly after Pearl was kidnapped, Pakistani officials too said they doubted the story that the young reporter was looking into Richard Reid. A spokesman for Pakistan's military government, Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi, told United Press International that Pakistani officials could not understand why Pearl was visiting Karachi to meet a religious leader who lived in Lahore.
Gilani, the person Pearl was reportedly trying to meet, heads Jamaat-ul-Fuqra or the Party of the Poor, and has thousands of followers around the world, including the United States.
Gilani and his followers are long believed to have been involved in terrorist acts and appear on the State Department's list of terrorist groups.
Gilani, however, lives in Lahore, which is closer to the Pakistani capital Islamabad where Pearl was before he flew to the southern port city of Karachi -- hundreds of miles south of Lahore.
Pakistani intelligence sources told UPI that Mohammed, the man Pearl was actually trying to track down, also had links to Gilani and his party.
On July 15, an anti-terrorism court in the southern Pakistani city of Hyderabad convicted four men for kidnapping and murdering Pearl. The suspected ringleader, British-born Pakistani Ahmad Omar Saeed Shaikh, better known as Shaikh Omar, was sentenced to death while three others were sent to jail for life.
Throughout the trial, Omar maintained that -- although he knew how and by who Pearl had been killed -- he was not himself responsible.
Subsequently, there were reports that four other men had also been arrested by Pakistani police in connection with the murder. But Pakistani security officials told UPI that in order for the new suspects to be put on trial, the four convicted men would also have to be tried again, because evidence against the new suspects undermined the case against Omar and his accomplices.
Mohammed was seen in Islamabad's posh F-7 sector when Pakistani and U.S. officials arrested Ramzi Yusuf, the man who tried to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993.
The director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, Josef Bodansky, told UPI emphatically, "Mohammed was Pearl's killer." "An Algerian actually did the job, but Mohammed gave the order for the killing. There's no question about it," he said. Bodansky said Mohammed also has ties to Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence agency, which he said had acted to shield him in the past.
"Mohammed was running operations right in Karachi," said Bodansky. Bodansky would not reveal his sources of information.
According to Baer, he was first informed of Mohammed's role as a key aide to terrorist mastermind bin Laden as early as December 1997 when he met a former police chief from Doha, Qatar, at a dinner in Damascus.
In 1997, Baer had left the agency to become a consultant in Beirut. Terrorism was Baer's field and Baer began to meet the ex-Doha police chief from time to time. The ex-Doha police chief, who Baer declined to identify by name, told Baer that during the course of his work he found that there was a bin Laden cell in Qatar, being sheltered by the Qatari government.
The two main members of the cell were Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Shawqui Islambuli, the brother of the Egyptian who had killed Anwar Sadat. They also were linked to terrorist Ramzi Yousef, but what worried the former police chief was the fact that Mohammed and Islambuli were experts in hijacking commercial planes. The ex-police chief told Baer that Mohammed "is going to hijack some planes." The ex-police chief said his basis for this was evidence developed by police and Qatari intelligence.
The ex-police chief told Baer that Mohammed was being shielded by the Qatar government and told how, in 1996, the FBI sent in a team to arrest Mohammed and Islambuli. While pretending to help, elements in the Qatari government stalled U.S. agents and supplied the two suspects, Mohammed and Islambuli with passports in fake names and spirited them out of the country.
Mohammed went to the Czech Republic where he began to live under the alias "Mustaf Nasir."
Mohammed also traveled to Germany to meet bin Laden associates, Baer said.
Baer sent this information to a friend in the CIA Counter-terrorist Center who forwarded the information to his superiors. Baer heard nothing. "There was no interest," he said.
Baer said he was frustrated and called Pearl. Baer said he told Pearl he had a hot story on terrorism and the fact that a U.S. ally like Qatar was actually working against the United States when it came to bin Laden.
Baer said to his annoyance, Pearl did not begin to work on the story. Nothing was done until the day of the Sept. 11 attacks when Pearl called to talk to Baer. Baer said he gave Pearl all the old information he had and new information he had since obtained -- for example, that there are files on Mohammed in the Qatari Embassy in London.
Baer said he and Pearl then "began to work together" -- in other words, Pearl would get info and check it out with Baer and Baer would feed Pearl what he was getting. It was "a joint project," said Baer. Baer was giving direction, but Pearl's contacts were not confined to Baer.
After Pearl's murder, Baer said, he took his information about Mohammed to the Justice Department, but again, as with the agency, he never received a call nor did the department express any interest. The case is currently being handled by the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey, Justice Department officials said.
Asked to comment on Baer's information, Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles McKenna, told UPI, "I will pass this on to my agents, but this is nothing that I've heard of."
A joint congressional probe into Sept.11-related intelligence failures made a veiled reference to "a key al Qaida leader" whose "growing importance to al Qaida" the U.S. intelligence community had failed to recognize. U.S. intelligence, said the committee also did not "anticipate his involvement in the terrorist attack of Sept. 11." The leader in question is widely believed to be Mohammed.
I've since changed my opinion about this piece. Everything we've discovered says it is true. I don't know if the cell has since been cleaned up or if the recent shootings outside the base at Doha are just a foretaste of what is to come.
"has identified Mohammed as the man who drew the knife across Pearl's throat"
Terry Yeakey's throat was cut.
he took his information about Mohammed to the Justice Department, but again, as with the agency, he never received a call nor did the department express any interest.
The Justice Department covered up the murder of Terry Yeakey.
"Mohammed was the story he was working on, not Richard Reid."
Media disinformation on the activities of both prior to their murder.
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was investigating the man (Khalid Mohammed) who allegedly planned the Sept. 11 airplane hijackings and attacks on New York and Washington when he was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan, according to two former Central Intelligence Agency officials
There is strong evidence supporting my opinion that Khalid Mohammed was the mastermind of the Middle Eastern participation in the OKC bombing. OKC Police Officer Terry Yeakey was murdered to prevent information he had on the OKC bombing from becoming public or reaching responsible authorities.
I agree. I also think OKC is where the anthrax blackmail started.
I suspect Yeakey was killed (probably after being tortured) by the Iraqis (possibly as proxies for the PRC) to keep him from jeapordizing their blackmail scheme.
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