Posted on 05/28/2002 2:58:17 PM PDT by swarthyguy
The case relating to the kidnapping and brutal murder of Daniel Pearl, the American journalist who worked for the "Wall Street Journal", is getting curiouser and curiouser ---and murkier and murkier. In the case as projected by the Karachi Police investigators till recently, there were three principal accused, who masterminded the act of terrorism, and three others who played a peripheral role only in the events relating to the dissemination by E-Mail of the photograph of Pearl in captivity with a list of the demands of the terrorists.
While Gen. Pervez Musharraf himself and the military-intelligence establishment projected the principal accused as belonging to the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) led by Maulana Masood Azhar, the Karachi Police continued to project them as activists of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) and the Harkat-ul-Jihad- al-Islami (HUJI) led by Qari Saifullah Akhtar, which, amongst all the Pakistani jehadi organisations, is estimated to have the largest following in the lower and middle ranks of the Army.
The Police suspicion on the HUJI and the HUM was based on the modus operandi (MO) followed by the kidnappers for killing Pearl---cutting open the throat and then beheading -- which, according to them, is not used by any other terrorist organisation in the Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) State of India, Pakistan or Afghanistan and on the known HUJI/HUM background of some of the dramatis personae.
Among the dramatis personae named by the Police as belonging to the HUJI/HUM were Omar Sheikh himself, Mansur Hasnain alias Imtiaz Siddiqui alias Hyder, Amjad Hussian Farooqui,and Muhammad Hashim Qadir alias Arif. The Police quoted Omar Sheikh as saying that Mansur Hasnain, a Pakistani Punjabi from the Toba Tek Singh District of Punjab, was the leader of the HUM group, which had hijacked an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar in December,1999, to secure the release of Maulana Masood Azhar and Omar Sheikh. Omar surrendered to a retired ISI officer in Lahore on February 5, 2002. Mansur Hasnain and Farooqui are still absconding. The peripheral accused have all been arrested.
According to the Police, Amjad Hussain Farooqui, also a Pakistani Punjabi, belongs to the HUJI . The "News" of February 16,2002, quoted a Pakistani Police officer involved in the investigation as saying as follows on Farooqui: ": " He is a jehadi who has been mainly active in Afghanistan, but he lives in Karachi. The HUJI is the main Pakistani backer of the Taliban. About 1,800 of its 5,000 members were killed in northern Afghanistan during the US-led air strikes and the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance offensive. The HUJI members are believed to be part of a network of cells involved in the kidnapping. The operation was planned very intelligently, using cells unknown to each other."
It was said that Muhammad Hashim Qadir alias Arif, a resident of Bhawalpur, whom Pearl met first, belonged to the HUM. Omar Sheikh reportedly told the Police that the kidnappers operated in three groups. Omar himself and Arif won the confidence of Pearl. Mansur Hasnain and Amjad Hussain Farooqui kidnapped Pearl and kept him in custody and Omar, with the help of Adil Mohammad Sheikh, a member of the staff of the Special Branch of the Sindh Police, and his cousins Suleman Saquib and Fahad Nasim arranged for taking the photograph of Pearl in custody, having it scanned and sending the E-Mail with his photograph to the media and others making their demands. According to the Police, Saquib and Nasim belonged to the JEM, thereby indicating the possibility that the kidnapping and murder might have been jointly planned and carried out by the HUJI, the HUM and the JEM.
The HUM, the JEM and the HUJI are members of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front for Jehad against the US and Israel. The HUM was designated by the US as a foreign terrorist organisation in 1997, but it has not so far been banned by Musharraf. The US had designated the JEM as a foreign terrorist organisation in December, 2001. This was followed by an ostensible ban on the organisation imposed by Musharraf on January 15, 2002, and the detention of Azhar and about 500 of his followers, who have all been released since then on the ground that there was no evidence of terrorism against them.
The HUJI, which is considered the most ruthless and the most anti-American amongst the terrorist organisations of Pakistan after the Sunni extremist Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), which has also been ostensibly banned by Musharraf since January 15,2002, has not so far been banned. Nor has the US designated the HUJI as yet as a foreign terrorist organisation.
The HUJI was associated in 1995 in a coup plot with a group of Army officers led by Maj. Gen. Zahir-ul-Islam Abbasi, former head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) set-up in the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi in the late 1980s, who was subsequently punished by the late Gen. Asif Nawaz Janjua, the then Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), for undertaking an unauthorised raid into an Indian Army position in the Siachen, which ended disastrously for the Pakistani Army.
The plot was detected in time and Abbasi and other officers were court-martialed by Gen. Abdul Wahid Kakkar, the then COAS, and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. Abbasi, who was and continues to be a close personal friend of Musharraf, was released last year. It is not known whether he has completed his term of imprisoment or was the beneficiary of a remission given by Musharraf. Qari Saifullah Akhtar and some other leaders of the HUJI, who were also arrested by the ISI during the investigation of the plot, were never prosecuted and were subsequently released.
Since his release, Abbasi has formed an organisation called Hizbollah and has been carrying on anti-American propaganda among ex-servicemen in different parts of Pakistan and trying to motivate the various jehadi organisations to keep up their jehad against India and the US.
After the suicide bomb attack in Karachi on May 8, 2002,which killed 11 French experts working in a submarine project, Khaled Ahmed, the well-known Pakistani analyst, wrote an article titled "The Biggest Militia We Know Nothing About" in the prestigious "Friday Times" of Lahore. In this article, he stated as follows: "ARY DIGITAL TV’s host Dr Masood, while discussing the May 8 killing of 11 French nationals in Karachi, named one Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami as one of the suspected terrorists involved in the bombing. When the Americans bombed the Taliban and Mulla Umar fled from his stronghold in Kandahar, a Pakistani personality also fled with him. This was Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the leader of Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami, Pakistan’s biggest jehadi militia headquartered in Kandahar. No one knew the name of the outfit and its leader. A large number of its fighters made their way into Central Asia and Chechnya to escape capture at the hands of the Americans, the rest stole back into Pakistan to establish themselves in Waziristan and Buner. Their military training camp (maskar) in Kotli in Azad Kashmir swelled with new fighters and now the outfit is scouting some areas in the NWFP (North-West Frontier Province )to create a supplementary maskar for jehad in Kashmir. Its ‘handlers’ (in the Inter-Services Intelligence) have clubbed it together with Harkatul Mujahideen to create Jamiatul Mujahideen in order to cut down the large number of outfits gathered together in Azad Kashmir. It was active in Held Kashmir under the name of Harkatul Jahad Brigade 111.
"The leader of Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami, Qari Saifullah Akhtar was an adviser to Mulla Umar in the Taliban government. His fighters were called ‘Punjabi’ Taliban and were offered employment, something that other outfits could not get out of Mulla Umar. The outfit had membership among the Taliban too. Three Taliban ministers and 22 judges belonged to the Harkat. In difficult times, the Harkat fighters stood together with Mulla Umar. Approximately 300 of them were killed fighting the Northern Alliance, after which Mulla Umar was pleased to give Harkat the permission to build six more maskars in Kandahar, Kabul and Khost, where the Taliban army and police also received military training. From its base in Afghanistan, Harkat launched its campaigns inside Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Chechnya. But the distance of Qari Saifullah Akhtar from the organisation’s Pakistani base did not lead to any rifts. In fact, Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami emerged from the defeat of the Taliban largely intact. In Pakistan Qari Akhtar has asked the ‘returnees’ to lie low for the time being, while his Pakistani fighters already engaged are busy in jehad as before.
"The Harkat is the only militia which boasts international linkages. It calls itself ‘the second line of defence of all Muslim states’ and is active in Arakan in Burma, and Bangladesh, with well organised seminaries in Karachi, and Chechnya, Sinkiang, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The latest trend is to recall Pakistani fighters stationed abroad and encourage the local fighters to take over the operations. Its fund-raising is largely from Pakistan, but an additional source is its activity of selling weapons to other militias. Its acceptance among the Taliban was owed to its early allegiance to a leader of the Afghan war, Maulvi Nabi Muhammadi and his Harkat Inqilab Islami whose fighters became a part of the Taliban forces in large numbers. Nabi Muhammadi was ignored by the ISI in 1980 in favour of Hekmatyar and his Hezb-e-Islami. His outfit suffered in influence inside Afghanistan because he was not supplied with weapons in the same quantity as some of the other seven militias.
"According to the journal Al-Irshad of Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami, published from Islamabad, a Deobandi group led by Maulana Irshad Ahmad was established in 1979. Looking for the right Afghan outfit in exile to join in Peshawar, Maulana Irshad Ahmad adjudged Maulvi Nabi Muhammadi as the true Deobandi and decided to join him in 1980. Harkat Inqilab Islami was set up by Maulana Nasrullah Mansoor Shaheed and was taken over by Nabi Muhammadi after his martyrdom. Eclipsed in Pakistan, Maulana Irshad Ahmad fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets till he was killed in battle in Shirana in 1985. His place was taken by Qari Saifullah Akhtar, which was not liked by some of the Harkat leaders, including Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khaleel who then set up his own Harkatul Mujahideen.
"According to some sources, Harkatul Mujahideen was a new name given to Harkatul Ansar after it was declared terrorist by the United States. Other sources claim that it was Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami that had earlier merged with Harkatul Ansar. But relations with Fazlur Rehman Khaleel remained good, but when Maulana Masood Azhar separated from Harkatul Mujahideen and set up his own Jaish-e-Muhammad, Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami opposed Jaish in its journal Sada-e-Mujahid (May 2000) and hinted that ‘you-know-who’ had showered Jaish with funds. Jaish was supported by Mufti Shamzai of Banuri (Binori) Mosque of Karachi and was given a brand new maskar in Balakot by the ISI.
"The sub-militia (of the HUJI) fighting in Kashmir is semi-autonomous and is led by chief commander Muhammad Ilyas Kashmiri. Its training camp is 20 km from Kotli in Azad Kashmir, with a capacity for training 800 warriors, and is run by one Haji Khan. Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami went into Kashmir in 1991 but was at first opposed by the Wahhabi elements there because of its refusal to criticise the grand Deobandi congregation of Tableeghi Jamaat and its quietist posture. But as days passed, its warriors were recognised as ‘Afghanis’. It finally had more martyrs in the jehad of Kashmir than any other militia. Its resolve and organisation were recognised when foreigners were seen fighting side by side with its Punjabi warriors.
"To date, 650 Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami mujahideen have been killed in battle against the Indian army: 190 belonging to both sides of Kashmir, nearly 200 belonging to Punjab, 49 to Sindh, 29 to Balochistan, 70 to Afghanistan, 5 to Turkey, and 49 collectively to Uzbekistan, Bangladesh and the Arab world.
"Because of its allegiance to the spiritual legacy of Deobandism, Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami did not attack the Tableeghi Jamaat, which stood it in good stead because it became the only militia whose literature was allowed to be distributed during the congregations of the Tableeghi Jamaat, and those in the Pakistani establishment attending the congregation were greatly impressed by the militia’s organisational excellence. It contained more graduates of the seminaries than any other militia, thus emphasising its religious character as envisaged by its founder and by Maulvi Nabi Muhammadi. It kept away from the sectarian conflict unlike Jaish-e-Muhammad but its men were at times put off by the populist Kashmiri Islam and reacted violently to local practices.
"The leader of Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami in Uzbekistan is Sheikh Muhammad Tahir al-Farooq. So far 27 of its fighters have been killed in battle against the Uzbek president Islam Karimov, as explained in the Islamabad-based journal Al-Irshad. Starting in 1990, the war against Uzbekistan was bloody and was supported by the Taliban, till in 2001, the commander had to ask the Pakistanis in Uzbekistan to return to base.
"In Chechnya, the war against the Russians was carried on under the leadership of commander Hidayatullah. Pakistan’s embassy in Moscow once denied that there were any Pakistanis involved in the Chechnyan war, but journal Al-Irshad (March 2000) declared from Islamabad that the militia was deeply involved in the training of guerrillas in Chechnya for which purpose commander Hidayatullah was stationed in the region. It estimated that ‘dozens’ of Pakistani fighters had been martyred fighting against Russian infidels.
"When the Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami men were seen first in Tajikistan, they were mistaken by some observers as being fighters from Sipah Sahaba, but in fact they were under the command of commander Khalid Irshad Tiwana, helping Juma Namangani and Tahir Yuldashev resist the Uzbek ruling class in the Ferghana Valley. The anti-Uzbek warlords were being sheltered by Mulla Umar in Afghanistan.
"Maulana Abdul Quddus heads the Burmese warriors located in Karachi and fighting mostly in Bangladesh on the Arakanese border. Korangi is the base of the Arakanese Muslims who fled Burma to fight the jehad from Pakistan. A large number of Burmese are located inside Korangi and the area is sometimes called mini-Arakan. Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami has opened 30 seminaries for them inside Korangi, there being 18 more in the rest of Karachi. Maulana Abdul Quddus, a Burmese Muslim, while talking to weekly Zindagi (25-31 January 1998), revealed that he had run away from Burma via India and took religious training in the Harkat seminaries in Karachi and on its invitation went to Afghanistan, took military training there and fought the jehad from 1982 to 1988. In Orangi, the biggest seminary is Madrasa Khalid bin Walid where 500 Burmese are under training. They were trained in Afghanistan and later made to fight against the Northern Alliance and against the Indian army in Kashmir. The Burmese prefer to stay in Pakistan, and very few have returned to Burma or to Bangladesh. There are reports of their participation in the religious underworld in Karachi.
"Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami has branch offices in 40 districts and tehsils in Pakistan, including Sargodha, Dera Ghazi Khan, Multan, Khanpur, Gujranwala, Gujrat, Mianwali, Bannu, Kohat, Waziristan, Dera Ismail Khan, Swabi and Peshawar. It also has an office in Islamabad. Funds are collected from these grassroots offices as well as from sources abroad. The militia has accounts in two branches of Allied Bank in Islamabad, which have not been frozen because the organisation is not under a ban. The authorities have begun the process of reorganisation of jehad by changing names and asking the various outfits to merge. Harkat al-Jahad al-Islami has been asked to merge with Harkatul Mujahideen of Fazlur Rehman Khaleel who had close links with Osama bin Laden. The new name given to this merger is Jamiatul Mujahideen. Jamaat Islami’s Hizbul Mujahideen has been made to absorb all the refugee Kashmiri organisations. Jaish and Lashkar-e-Tayba have been clubbed together as Al-Jahad. All the Barelvi organisations, so far located only in Azad Kashmir, have been put together as Al-Barq. Al-Badr and Hizbe Islami have been renamed as Al-Umar Mujahideen, " the article concluded.
The trial of Omar Sheikh and the peripheral accused has been going on in a special anti-terrorism court in Hyderabad, Sindh, for more than a month, with neither the Judge nor the prosecution nor the defence showing any interest in an early conclusion. Despite the provision in Pakistan's Anti-Terrorism Act that recording of evidence should be held on a day to day basis without adjournment and the trial completed within a week, the defence has been given one adjournment after another under some pretext or the other.
Moreover, Omar Sheikh, who had during the investigation confessed to his role not only in the kidnapping of Pearl, but also in the terrorist attacks on the J&K Assembly in Srinagar on October 1,2001, on the Indian Parliament at New Delhi on December 13,2001, and on the security personnel outside the American Centre in Kolkata (Calcutta) on January 22,2002, has now retracted his entire confession and has been denying any role in Pearl's kidnapping.
In the meanwhile, in a sudden and surprise development, the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment and the Karachi Police have mounted an operation the purpose of which could be to draw suspicion away from the HUM and the HUJI, which are close to the Army, and hence have not so far been banned and to direct the suspicion towards the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), the Sunni extremist organisation, its militant wing Lashkar Jhangvi (LJ) and the JEM. The LJ was banned by Musharraf on August 14, 2001, and the SSP itself and the JEM on January 15, 2002.
On May 16, 2002, the Karachi Police claimed to have recovered the remains of an unidentified dead body cut into 10 pieces, which were found buried in a nursery (Gulzare Hijri) on a plot of land in the outlying Gulshan-e-Maymar area of Karachi. They further claimed that the remains were recovered following a tip-off from a human source and that, according to the source, the remains were of Pearl. The local media also reported that there was an improvised shed on the plot where Pearl was suspected to have been held in captivity before his murder and that the plot belonged to Al Rashid Trust of Karachi. The results of the DNA and other forensic examination to determine whether the remains were really those of Pearl are still awaited.
Some years ago, Al Rashid Trust was floated and got registered by the ISI as a charitable organisation to receive funds from abroad and channel them to the Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan as well as to the Pakistani Punjabi jehadi organisations in J & K. In an investigative report published by the "Asia Times" on October 26,2001, Pepe Escobar wrote as follows: " The Pakistani-based Al-Rashid Trust is one of the key organizations included in America's black book of terrorist groups. American intelligence -- for many a cynic, a contradiction in terms - may think that the elusive Osama bin Laden is the main source of hard cash for Al-Rashid. But in fact it is the other way around: Al-Rashid is one of Osama's many sources of income.
"Asia Times Online has learned from a key source how the trust is "very much part of Osama's international network" and that it is closely linked with the Taliban and with separatists fighting in Kashmir. The source says that "they [members of the trust] are financially helping the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and Jaish-i-Mohammad.
"Mufti Rashid is the amir (leader) of the trust. Mufti Abu Lubaba is the ideologue, while Maulvi Sibghatullah of the Dar-ul-Uloom (religious school) in Karachi is the director of the trust in Kandahar, the southern Afghan city that serves as the headquarters for the Taliban. Only the two muftis have direct access to bin Laden.
"Al-Rashid is also closely linked with the Jaish-i-Mohammad, a Pakistan-based militant religious organization, which is now also on the US terrorist list. Al-Rashid and Jaish-i-Mohammad share office buildings across the country, although some are strictly for the use of the Jaish-i-Mohammad. The groups also have common cadres, who undertake fundraising activities for both organizations. Indeed, it is often difficult to distinguish between the two outfits. Maulana Masood Azhar of the Jaish-i-Mohammad regularly writes for the weekly newspaper of Al-Rashid, the Zarb-I-Momin.
"Zarb-i-Momin, a weekly, reports the jihadi activities of the Taliban and the Jaish-i-Mohammad. It was closely associated with the Harakat-ul-Ansaar (another one on the US terror list) before the Jaish-i-Mohammad was founded in early 2000. The paper spews ultra-venomous propaganda against Hindus, Jews and Christians.
"Pakistani banks, after President General Pervez Musharraf's spectacular pro-US realignment, froze Al-Rashid's bank accounts, but this does not seem to pose a problem: the trust opened new accounts in the names of individuals. The biggest source of funds for Al-Rashid are the Middle East and everywhere where Pakistanis can be found, especially in Britain. The trust also has a network in South Africa. Al-Rashid also raises a lot of money in Pakistan. And Osama bin Laden, even if he cannot access an ATM in Kandahar, obviously remains an elite financial recipient."
In "the Washington Times" of November 6, 2001, Julian West reported as follows: "The Taliban regime is receiving weapons from Pakistani arms dealers who are funded by sympathetic local businessmen and a religious trust linked to al Qaeda, the international terror network headed by fugitive Osama bin Laden.
"Intelligence sources in Pakistan have described how arms are sent to the Taliban from the arms bazaars of Pakistan using a complex network of money changers, arms dealers and smugglers.
"According to these sources, the main sponsor of the illicit trade is Al Rashid Trust, a Karachi-based extremist organization whose bank accounts recently were frozen by the Pakistani government after it was suspected of channeling funds to al Qaeda, the prime suspect in the September 11 attacks on the United States. The other principal backers are a few wealthy businessmen based mainly in Lahore, Pakistan.
"In the past few weeks, Al Rashid Trust is believed to have smuggled an undetermined quantity of weapons and ammunition in trucks containing relief supplies such as blankets or wheat.
"The arms have been shipped through the desert border crossing at Chaman, near the Pakistani city of Quetta. >From there, the weapons, bought in the arms bazaars of Karachi, are being trucked along the straight desert road that leads to Kandahar, the Taliban heartland.
"The Al Rashid Trust is totally involved in supplying ammunition and weapons," said a former Pakistani intelligence source, who could not estimate the number of arms supplied. "They are sending in heavy weapons under blankets and foodstuffs; it's nonsense to believe this has stopped."
"An Afghan shipper in Peshawar, who until recently ferried fruit and other goods to and from Afghanistan, also confirmed that relief trucks had been used to transport arms during the period when the Taliban regime was under U.N. sanctions."
As pointed out in this writer's article titled "Pakistan & Terrorism: The Evidence" (http://www.saag.org/papers4/paper390.html ), while making a pretense of freezing the accounts of the Al Rashid Trust, Musharraf has not acted against any of its office-bearers.
It is not clear as to who gave the information to the Karachi Police about the burial of these remains in a plot of land belonging to the Al Rashid Trust----a human source as claimed by the Police or by some new suspects who have been picked up by the Police, but whose arrest has not been shown in Police records, lest the USA's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) wants to interrogate them or seeks their extradition to the US?
The "News" (May 23, 2002), the prestigious daily of Pakistan, reported that the information about the remains was given to the Karachi Police by one Fazal Karim -- a resident of Rahim Yar Khan and a father of five-- who is in Police custody, but has not been shown as arrested. According to the paper,Fazal Karim had identified Lashkar-e- Jhangvi's Naeem Bukhari as the ring leader of the group that also included "three Yemeni-Baluch" (father Yemeni and mother Baloch) who took part in Pearl's kidnapping, his murder and disposal of his body parts. Naeem Bukhari is wanted by police in Punjab and Karachi in more than a dozen cases of anti-Shia killings. Fazal Karim reportedly confirmed Omar Sheikh's role in planning Pearl's kidnapping.
The "News" further reported as follows: "Fazal Karim has also revealed that major Pakistani cities may soon witness more suicidal attacks against the westerners and key government personalities, officials with direct knowledge about the interrogation of this new accused person in the Pearl case divulged here on Wednesday.Pakistani security officials believe that because of increased monitoring activities by the military services in the tribal areas, scores of the foreigners, earlier hiding there, have now moved with the help of their trusted Pakistani religious supporters to the populous urban centres, such as Karachi. "There are scores of Arabs and their Pakistani loyalists who are desperate to blow themselves up to settle score with the Americans and other westerners," an official quoted Fazal Karim as saying. "These Arabs residing in various neighbourhoods in the outskirts of Karachi are on do-or-die missions," he added. Fazal told his investigators, "Our Arab friends hosted us in Afghanistan when we were on the run, now it's our turn to pay them back."
"Giving more specific information about the new terrorist threat in Karachi, Fazal is believed to have disclosed that the Airport hotel near Karachi airport, where the western military personnel of International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) were staying, had been selected by his group for a possible suicidal strike.
""Informed diplomats in Islamabad termed "a watershed" and "very dangerous" the evidence that previously friendly groups have merged operationally. Al-Qaeda signatures, not seen previously in Pakistan, were starkly visible in the recent attacks apparently carried out principally by the Pakistanis: detailed planning, western targets and, in the two attacks, suicide bombers, " the paper concluded.
Intriguingly, on May 14, 2002, two days before the recovery of the remains of a dead body, claimed to be that of Pearl, by the Karachi Police, the Punjab Police claimed that Riaz Basra, the long absconding leader of the LJ and three of his associates were killed in an encounter in a Punjab village when they had gone there to kill a Shia leader. Sections of the Pakistani media have expressed doubts over the Police version and alleged that Riaz Basra was in the informal custody of a sensitive Pakistani intelligence agency (ISI) since January, 2002, without it taking any action against him and that the Police, now for reasons not clear, have shown him as having been killed in an encounter.
On May 19, 2002, Pakistani journalists received phone calls from a person identifying himself as Musa of Hezbullah Alami, claimimg responsibility for the kidnapping and murder of Pearl, the grenade attack on an Islamabad church on March 17, 2002, and the suicide bomb attack on the French experts in Karachi on May 8, 2002. The person strongly criticised Musharraf's pro-US policies and his co-operation with the US in its war against the Taliban and the Al Qaeda and reportedly hinted that the remains recovered by the Karachi Police were not those of Pearl. He also reportedly claimed that neither the HUJI or the LJ had anything to do with Pearl's kidnapping and murder. He also said that it was the Al Saiqua, the organisation to which reference had been made by this writer in his comments on the attack on the French experts available at www.saag.org , which had now renamed itself as Hezbullah Alami. No further details of this organisation are known.
These intriguing developments have given rise to many more questions without answers such as:
* According to Omar Sheikh, he had voluntarily surrendered to a retired ISI officer on February 5, 2002, but he was shown as arrested by the Punjab Police on February 12, 2002, when Musharraf was in Washington DC. It has now come out that Riaz Basra, considered one of the most dreaded terrorists of Pakistan, was also with the ISI since around end-January/beginning February. Whereas Omar Sheikh was shown as arrested, Riaz Basra has been shown as killed in an encounter. Were both these incidents connected and what was their linkage with the Pearl case? * The alleged encounter death of Riaz Basra has almost coincided with the new version put out by the Karachi Police about the involvement of the LJ in the murder of Pearl. Instead of interrogating him on this, why did the ISI choose to have him killed in an alleged encounter?
* Why are Musharraf and the ISI repeatedly trying to steer the suspicion away from the HUM and the HUJI and why has Musharraf not banned these organisations?
* Was the ISI aware where Pearl had been kept in custody? If so, why it did not try to rescue him?
* Was it aware where the remains of Pearl had been buried? If so, why it did not earlier try to recover them?
* Why are Musharraf and the military-intelligence establishment not keen on an early conclusion of the trial of Omar Sheikh?
* Has the Hezbullah Alami been got floated by Musharraf himself in order to make the US believe that the terrorists are now targetting him because of his co-operation with the US in Afghanistan and, therefore, the US should not press him too hard to crush terrorism against India?
* Why is the USA not vigorously following up the case and holding Tricky Mush and the ISI accountable for the various acts of commission and omission and blatant lies in the Pearl case?
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com )
Excellent point.
They are not the only connections between radical groups in Pakistan and the US to surface in the Pearl murder case, either.
U.S. Muslim group probed for terrorist ties
The investigation is based on surveillance of activities between a Muslim settlement in southern Virginia and a suspected Middle Eastern terrorist leader.The newly enhanced investigation began shortly after Pakistani cleric El Sheik Sayyid Mubarik Ali Gilani was arrested last month in the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
Sheik Gilani, leader of a terrorist organization known as al-Fuqra, was taken into custody after law enforcement officials learned of communications between the sheik and a commune of the Muslims of America Red House, Va.
Law-enforcement authorities said yesterday that Justice and Treasury department investigators are involved in a comprehensive review of the militant organization, founded by Sheik Gilani in 1980.
U.S. Muslim group probed for terrorist ties
"That money was traced out of our state to New York, then hand-carried to Pakistan by trusted members of al-Fuqra," Miss Fenger said. Several members of the Colorado group later were convicted of crimes including racketeering and forgery.The latest investigation is focused on Muslim communities composed entirely of black Americans in New York, California, South Carolina and Virginia.
Mr. Pearl was seeking to interview Sheik Gilani when he disappeared Jan. 23 in Karachi, Pakistan. He was doing research for a story on militant Muslim sects, including al-Fuqra.
Two prominent personalities from the USA, not belonging to the world of terrorists, who figure in the statement made to the Police by Khalid Khwaja, a retired Air Force officer who had worked in the ISI till 1988 and who was reportedly in touch with Osama bin Laden, are Mansur Ijaz, an American lobbyist of Pakistani origin, and James Woolsey, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a close personal friend of Ijaz.
Khwaja, who is related to Gilani, is reported to have told the Police that Ijaz and Woolsey had been in touch with him since September 11, 2001, and had sought his assistance for persuading Mulla Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Taliban, to hand over bin Laden to the USA for trial. In the beginning of January,2002, Pearl had rung him up and sought his assistance for meeting Gilani. Pearl told him that Ijaz had recommended that he (Pearl) should contact him (Khwaja). Khwaja claimed that he had turned down Pearl's request.
According to the statement of Khwaja, he came to know after the murder of Pearl that the "Newsweek" was going to carry negative references to him (Khwaja) in its report on the murder. He immediately rang up Ijaz and conveyed his concern to him. Khwaja alleged that Ijaz rang him up later and told him that he had persuaded the "Newsweek" to tone down, if not delete the references to him.
Did Ijaz tell Khwaja that Pearl was Jewish and that his parents were Israeli nationals? Did the interest taken by Ijaz in helping Pearl meet well-informed people in the world of terrorism in Pakistan and his perceived proximity to Woolsey create fears in the minds of the terrorists and the ISI that Pearl was being used by the CIA to smoke out bin Laden and collect information about bin Laden's continuing contacts with the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment?
http://www.opinioninc.com/current/april/043097.html
http://www.frontpagemag.com/gopostal/1999/gp07-12-99.htm
http://www.dur.ac.uk/justin.willis/lado.htm
The funny thing is, a guy like Ijaz is safer in India than in his native pakistan where he supposedly has a death fatwa on his head; done no doubt to enhance his 'credibility' here in the USA.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.