Posted on 09/12/2002 9:31:49 AM PDT by HAL9000
KARACHI, Sept 12 (AFP) - Pakistani police are probing links between the murder of US reporter Daniel Pearl and suspected al-Qaeda militants killed in a raid in the crowded southern port city of Karachi, an investigator said Thursday.The militants were shot dead Wednesday during a fierce three-hour firefight with police who raided their hideout in an apartment in an affluent Karachi suburb. Two of the militants were killed and five were arrested.
"It could be possible that one of the dead militants had links with the murder of Daniel Pearl," a police investigator told AFP, on condition of anonymity.
Police were still checking the nationalities of the militants, Karachi police chief Inspector General Syed Kamal Shah said.
"Since no one has come to identify the dead, we believe they are foreigners. But I can't say about the nationalities," he told AFP.
A senior police intelligence officer initially described the two dead suspects as Yemenis. He said one of them was suspected of involvement in the killing of Pearl after he was kidnapped in Karachi on January 23.
A video cassette delivered to the US consulate a month later showed hidden assailants beheading the Wall Street Journal correspondent. His dismembered body was dug up from a shallow grave on the city's outskirts on May 17.
"We have very strong suspicions that one of (the dead militants) was the one who beheaded Pearl," the investigator said.
"We will view the footage of his beheading again and try to match the killers whose faces were not shown in the video.
"We are rechecking this information from other intelligence agencies but one of them matched the description of a person suspected of murdering Pearl."
Another investigator closely involved with the Pearl case said Islamic militant Fazal Karim, who guided police to Pearl's grave and has been held secretly in custody since early May, would be taken to the city morgue to identify whether the dead militant was one of the reporter's killers.
Another Pearl investigator said in July, on condition of anonymity, that Karim had confessed to taking part in the beheading of Pearl.
A senior government official said Wednesday the group of militants who were the target of the raid had links to the al-Qaeda terror network which is blamed for the September 11 attacks in the US.
Police were also examining documents printed in Arabic which were recovered from the hideout.
Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider told AFP last month that police were investigating a possible al-Qaeda link in the Pearl case.
Investigators had "an inkling" that a non-Pakistani man of Arab appearance who gave money to his captors and killers of the Wall Street Journal correspondent may be an al-Qaeda member, Haider said.
"He funded money to these killers of Daniel Pearl and people who abducted him. He was in the background. He gave money," the minister said.
"We inferred that, as an Arab, maybe there is an al-Qaeda connection."
Police have been saying for months that they believed al-Qaeda operatives who fled neighbouring Afghanistan had teamed up with local Pakistani militants to plan attacks against Western and Christian targets, in revenge for the US-led war on terrorism.
Four Pakistani Islamic militants were found guilty in July of plotting the abduction and murder of Pearl. British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was sentenced to death for masterminding the plot, while his three accomplices were given life prison terms for abetting him.
All four insist they are innocent and have lodged appeals against the verdicts.
This photograph was seized from Saudi Arabian fighters captured in Crni Vrh near Teslic, Bosnia. A Muslim solder displays the severed head of Blagoje Blagojevic, a Serb from the village of Jasenovo near Teslic.
Daniel Pearl exposed lies of Al Qaida allies in Kosovo, perhaps there was a contract on him.
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