Posted on 02/07/2002 5:52:04 AM PST by Spar
Profile of WSJ Kidnapping Suspect
Wed Feb 6, 5:42 PM ET
This is an undated photo of Sheik Omar Saeed, who is being hunted by police in Pakistan in connection with the kidnapping of US reporter Daniel Pearl, it was reported Wednesday Feb. 6, 2002, in The Times newspaper, London. Saeed, 27, a London-born former British public schoolboy was named by officials at the US State Department as a key figure in the kidnapping, according to the newspaper report. (AP Photo/PA)
KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) - The leading suspect in the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is a 27-year-old Briton, educated in the country's expensive private schools and described by his one-time tutor as "a nice bloke."
But Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, also known as Sheik Omar Saeed, went on from his placid upbringing to a shadowy life of jail and reputed connections to Islamic militant groups.
Saeed was arrested in India in 1994 in connection with the kidnapping of three British backpackers in Kashmir to demand the release of Islamic militants fighting to end Indian rule in the contested Himalayan region.
Saeed was shot and wounded by police and the hostages were freed unharmed.
He spent the next five years in jail — although never brought to trial — and was freed after gunmen hijacked an Indian Airlines jet to Kandahar, Afghanistan, and demanded the release of Saeed and other figures.
Saeed, a first-generation Briton, is the son of a Pakistani-born clothing merchant who lives in a London suburb and attended expensive private schools where classmates and teachers regarded him as a devoted student.
He has been described by fellow classmates and teachers as a powerfully built young man, a disciplined student and a person with a sense of humor that allowed him to laugh at himself.
On summer break from university at age 20, Saeed went to Bosnia to work with a charity. British press reports say he is believed to have developed ties there to militant Islamic groups that recruited him to fight for the secession of the Indian-ruled portion of Kashmir, the only predominantly Muslim part of India.
Saeed is believed to have links to Jaish-e-Mohammed, a radical group banned last month by Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf. The group's founder, Maulana Masood Azhar, was freed as a result of the same hijacking that got Saeed out of Indian jail.
After his arrest in 1994 his parents said he was being tortured in India and protested his innocence. They told their local newspaper, the Wanstead and Woodford Guardian, that their son was being wrongly portrayed by India.
George Paynter, who was Saeed's economics tutor at Forest School in Snaresbrook, East London, said on Wednesday: "I'm horrified. The chap we knew was a good all round, solid and very supportive pupil.
"It is very difficult for us to understand because it isn't the Omar we knew," Paynter said. "He was a nice bloke and very respectful."
Although a devoted student who regularly received high grades, he scored only a "D" in Religious Studies at the school.
This Muslim charity business seems to be part of the pattern. Wasn't there Muslim charity collections being taken at those New Jersey mosques--but actually used to fund the first bombing of the World Trade Center back in 1993?
Another Muslim charity connection occurs in the story of Sami Al-Arian, the University of South Florida professor who got in big trouble on the O'Reilly show. Al-Arian was involved in some kind of Muslim charity that was revealed to involve known terrorists and funding terrorist activity in Palestine.
Al-Arian admitted on the O'Reilly show that he shouted out "Death to Israel" and blasted out other inflammatory jihadist war-cries at a large Islamist congregation--in Chicago, I think.
After a lot of academic hemming and hawing, Sami Al-Arian has now been booted out of his tenured position at USF.
But these patterns of terrorist ties with charitable and other seemingly innocent cultural organization seem to be finally articulating themselves as we move from horror to horror. Let's hope the U S Government is getting a firm handle on this complex and alarming situation
Looks like Islamic heads don't roll in Pakistan if it's a Muslim killing a kaffir(unbeliever in Mohammed's Allah).
Pakistan's Musharraf risks a wave of popular unrest and rioting--possibly the overrthrowing of his government--if he should bring this stone killer to trial and end up having to drop the axe on him.
Sheik Omar Saeed needs to be brought here to a military tribunal and feel the trap-door drop out from under his feet.
How Clintonesque. Of course they don't have any cells. You don't need "cells" to operate in a country where you are welcomed to train and breed terrorism. You only need "cells" when you need to hide from the government of the country you are in. And of course, the good journalist failed to ask if they had terroist training in Bosnia.
Someone should send the b**ch DelPonte to Saudi Arabia for a year to work as a live in maid.
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