Farooqi's death raises doubts in Pearl case

WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 (UPI) -- The death of a terror suspect in Pakistan this weekend has raised fresh questions about the beheading of an American journalist almost three years ago.

New information about the suspect, Amjad Farooqi, indicates that he, and not the man convicted for the murder of Daniel Pearl, plotted the journalist's abduction and the subsequent decapitation.

Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was abducted in Karachi, Pakistan, on Jan. 23, 2002. A video released by his abductors showed masked men beheading him. Some weeks later police discovered his body in a deserted place in Karachi.

On June 15, 2002, a court in Pakistan convicted Ahmed Omar Saeed Shaikh and three others for the murder. Shaikh, 29, was sentenced to death by hanging for having masterminded the abduction and the murder. Sheikh Adil, Fahad Naseem and Salman Saqib were each sentenced to life in prison.

The death sentence has not yet been carried out as a high court in Pakistan is hearing Shaikh's appeal. Others also have appealed their conviction.

Soon after the conviction, both U.S. and Pakistani officials privately complained that while they had no doubts about Shaikh's involvement with the al-Qaida network, he was not the leader of the gang that kidnapped and decapitated Pearl.

During a visit to Washington in the autumn of 2002, a senior Pakistani official told United Press International he believed some other terror suspects already in police custody played a greater role in Pearl's murder than those convicted for the crime. He also said he believed that the ringleader and the masked man who killed Pearl were still at large.

And on Monday, a day after police in Pakistan announced that a key al-Qaida suspect, Farooqi, was killed in an encounter, senior Pakistani security officials told UPI that Farooqi, and not Shaikh, had planned Pearl's abduction and taken him to a hideout in Karachi where he was beheaded.

Farooqi is also believed to have brought an unidentified Arab to the hideout where Pearl was killed. U.S. and Pakistani officials say it was this Arab who beheaded Pearl.

Farooqi is also blamed for arranging two assassination attempts on Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf in December this year. Musharraf survived the attacks, but a dozen security guards were killed.

"Farooqi and another al-Qaida suspect Fazle Karim did play a key role in Pearl's abduction and the subsequent murder," says Rafat Saeed, a correspondent in Karachi for the German Radio Deutsche Welle. Saeed, who covered Pearl's abduction and the trial for the radio, believes that Farooqi was arrested late last year but the police did not announce the arrest.

The Pakistani police, however, say that Farooqi was never in their custody and that last week they raided his hideout in the remote desert town of Nawabshah, after tracing a cell phone call to him. He resisted arrest and was killed in the encounter, according to the their account.

Police, however, detained those who were hiding Farooqi and a dozen suspects were also arrested this week in raids throughout Pakistan.

Saeed says his investigations show that Karim also is already in police custody, but the police are not willing to acknowledge it.

When UPI checked his claim with senior police officers in Karachi, they acknowledged that sometimes they do not reveal the identity of the people they take into custody, but refused to confirm or deny whether they had done so in this case.

But one senior officer said that Farooqi and Karim had played a greater role in Pearl's abduction and beheading than Shaikh and his accomplices.

"But it does not mean that they are innocent. They were involved in the Pearl case as well as other terror attacks," the officer said.

Pakistani security sources told UPI that police interrogated Farooqi and Karim and learned information that could have exposed weaknesses in the government's case and could have led to the release of Shaikh and his accomplices.

"This would have been very embarrassing for the government. That's why Shaikh was silenced," said Saeed.

Other sources say that people like Farooqi, Karim and Shaikh had worked closely with the Pakistani spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, and for that reason, the Pakistani government fears bringing them to an open court. Shaikh and his accomplices were also tried inside a jail and the media were not allowed to cover the proceedings.

Pearl was probing links between Muslim militant groups and the ISI when kidnapped.

But Pakistan's Information Minister Shaikh Rashid rejected the claim as false. "These are mere speculations. No Pakistani agency has any link to these terrorists. Our soldiers are dying while fighting the terrorists. What else can Pakistan do?" he asked.

But those who believe that Farooqi was killed to hide the ISI's links to the militants say that the agency had close links to terror groups before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. Pakistan severed those links after Sept. 11 and is now a major U.S. partner in the "war against terror."

"I can speak without fear of contradiction (because everyone else is dead).

You can bet that Pakistan is tying up any 'loose strings'.

Honestly, I've heard so many theories on this subject already.

Let's be blunt here: what difference does it make? Terrorists killed him. It was a group of terrorists and I don't care who actually swung the axe: they all should be shot dead. I don't want one of them to get 10 years just because he organized it, and another one to get the death penalty because he did the actual killing. I want them all to get killed off.

As far as I'm concerned, Daniel Pearl is like a fellow soldier killed in combat by the other side. You don't stop to try to target the person who killed your fellow soldier. You fire a grenade or missile into the area to take the whole lot of them out as retaliation. Crude, but that's the nature of war.

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