Click to read Musharraf's memoir: Extract one Extract two Extract three Extract four M16 'didn't tell us that 7/7 bombers were in Pakistan'
Killer claims his innocence is proved by Musharraf's memoir
IN JANUARY 2002 the world’s media received e-mails saying that the journalist Daniel Pearl had been kidnapped. Pearl, a citizen of both the United States and Israel, was the South Asia bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal. The ransom demands included the release and return to Pakistan of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.
The e-mails also stated: “We assure Americans that they shall never be safe on the Muslim Land of Pakistan. And if our demands are not met this scene shall be repeated again and again.”
I was incensed when I learnt of this, disgusted that these criminals were distorting a religion of peace and beauty and using it as a cloak for their sins.
I immediately ordered all agencies to find Pearl’s kidnappers and the e-mails were traced to a man named Omar Saeed Sheikh.
The Wall Street Journal informed us that Pearl, who had arrived in Pakistan on December 29, 2001, with his wife, Marianne, had come to interview Pir Mubarik Ali Shah Jilani in connection with the story of the so-called shoe bomber, the Briton Richard Reid.
Our police detained and interrogated Jilani, who told them that Omar Sheikh had been very eager to meet the journalist. With this second mention of Omar Sheikh’s name, it seemed clear that he was involved.
Omar Sheikh is a British national born to Pakistani parents in London on December 23, 1973. His early education was in the United Kingdom, although he also spent four years at Lahore’s prestigious Aitchison College. He then went to the London School of Economics (LSE) but dropped out before graduation.
It is believed in some quarters that while Omar Sheikh was at the LSE he was recruited by the British intelligence agency MI6. It is said that MI6 persuaded him to take an active part in demonstrations against Serbian aggression in Bosnia and even sent him to Kosovo to join the jihad. At some point he probably became a rogue or double agent.
On his return from Bosnia he came to Pakistan, then had guerrilla training in Khost in Afghanistan. In 1994 he was arrested in India as part of a gang which kidnapped four Western tourists. He was released in 1999 as part of a deal to secure the safety of passengers aboard a hijacked Indian airliner.
After his release Omar Sheikh settled in Lahore but visited Afghanistan on four occasions to train operatives. He claims that during these visits he met Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, and that although he was not a permanent member of al-Qaeda he helped to finance it through ransom money generated from kidnappings.
In January 2002 Sheikh was informed that the journalist Pearl had turned up at the offices of extremist organisations in Rawalpindi and Islamabad. He arranged a meeting with Pearl at which the two exchanged telephone numbers and e-mail addresses.
It was at this meeting that an idea cropped up in Omar Sheikh’s twisted mind. He would kidnap Pearl to pressure the US Government to change its policies on Guantanamo Bay.
We had been looking for Omar Sheikh since the e-mails, but at first he could not be traced, although the police did arrest some of his friends and relatives.
Finally, on February 5, 2002, Omar Sheikh surrendered and under interrogation revealed that when his family members were arrested he became desperate. He phoned an accomplice in Karachi named Hussein and told him to release Daniel Pearl. He claimed he was then told that Daniel Pearl had been killed.
Although Omar Sheikh confessed in detail to having masterminded and arranged the kidnapping, he was adamant that he had not ordered the murder and that Pearl had been killed against his instructions.
At first I could not understand why Omar Sheikh surrendered to the police. Why didn’t he escape? Only after all the pieces had been put together did I realise that Omar Sheikh had panicked because the situation had spiralled out of his control. He didn’t realise that the people he had enlisted to help in the kidnapping were hardcore criminals who wouldn’t necessarily take instructions from him. He was now trying to save himself, thinking that by surrendering he might be treated leniently.
On February 21, 2002, the horrifying videotape of Pearl’s murder was released. It didn’t show the faces of his murderers.
Then in May 2002 we arrested someone named Fazal Karim, a militant activist. When we interrogated him we discovered that he was involved in Pearl’s slaughter. He also told us that he knew where Pearl was buried.
He was asked how he knew. Chillingly, he said he knew because he had actually participated in the slaughter by holding one of Pearl’s legs. But he didn’t know the name of the person who had actually slit Pearl’s throat. All he could say is that this person was “Arab-looking”.
He led us to the small house in a neighbourhood in Karachi where Daniel Pearl had been held captive. He then took us to a plot of land near by and told us where he was buried. We exhumed the body and found it in ten badly decomposed pieces. Our doctors stitched the pieces back together as best as they could.
The man who may have actually killed Pearl or at least participated in his butchery, we eventually discovered, was none other than Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, al-Qaeda’s No 3. When we later arrested and interrogated him, he admitted his participation.
In July 2002 an anti-terrorism court in Pakistan gave Omar Saeed Sheikh the death penalty. The case is currently on appeal. Daniel Pearl’s murder was one of many terrorist acts in Pakistan after 9/11, but it was particularly gruesome. May his soul rest in peace.
