India - Pakistan Crisis

http://www.saag.org/papers5/paper415.html

Top 106. Feb 24, 2002 8:58 PM

» JenL_2 - Re: ORIGINAL TEXT OF E-MAIL SENT TO NEWS MEDIA by kidnappers

In response to message posted by sillyme101:

Hi Sil - What do you think of this analysis of the Daniel Pearl Abduction by the South Asia Analysis Group?

In your opinion is it mostly truthful or mostly India propaganda?

Sil - I'm sure that most Pakistanis agree with you. I hope that Pres Musharraf is sincere and successful in eliminating fanatical extremists from Pakistan - not only the militant groups, but also their ISI handlers, and the radical Islamic clerics.

Pakistan now has the opportunity to rid themselves of the shackles of radicalism and move towards moderation for the social good and prosperity of the nation. It's not easy for a country whose internal and foreign policies were racing at highspeed in one direction.....to make a sharp U-turn.....and race at highspeed in the other direction. I wish Pakistan well......Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

Top 107. Feb 25, 2002 7:31 AM

» JenL_2 - Re: Pearl Abduction Investigation

More on the Pearl Abduction from several sources. There's not very much new here that hasn't already been posted somewhere on this thread..... infact it's rather frustrating to read/hear accounts in the media that are old news, aren't telling the whole story, or are actually somewhat misleading. Oh well - sooner or later it will all be sorted out and the truth will surface......or maybe not!

first from 2/25 MSNBC.com:

<img src="http://a799.ms.akamai.net/3/799/388/ac70..." width=250 height=190 align="left">Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh appeared in court Monday along with three other suspects in connection with the disappearance of Daniel Pearl.

Pearl suspects held for 2 more weeks

Charges delayed for trio held in journalist’s murder

MSNBC NEWS SERVICES

Feb. 25 — Three Islamic militants believed to have participated in the abduction and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl appeared in a Pakistani court Monday and were ordered held in police custody for two more weeks while prosecutors develop their case.

THE ACCUSED had been expected to face murder and kidnapping charges.

But in a closed hearing, the judge delayed the charges to give police more time to interrogate the suspects and recover Pearl’s body, said Raja Quereshi, the chief prosecutor. He said police also wanted more time to find the weapons used to kill Pearl.

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the alleged mastermind behind Pearl’s abduction and murder, and two of his alleged accomplices arrived at a courthouse in the southern port city of Karachi in two armored personnel carriers that were part of an eight-vehicle convoy.

Each suspect wore a hood made of white cloth as they entered the courthouse, their faces completely covered.

During the proceedings at a special anti-terrorism court, all three defendants complained that police had forced them to sign blank pieces of paper as part of coerced confessions, said defense attorney Khawaja Naveed. He said the judge, Shabir Ahmed, ordered police to refrain from such action.

In a court appearance on Feb. 14, Saeed confessed to Pearl’s kidnapping. Court officials later said that would not be enough to convict him because he was not under oath at the time.
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On Monday, Naveed quoted Saeed as saying: “I don’t want to make any confession.”

Quereshi, the prosecutor, said that none of the suspects complained of any ill treatment by police.

MORE SUSPECTS SOUGHT

Also on Monday, Pakistani police submitted the names of 11 suspects in the case, including the three who appeared in court. One other suspect held in the case, 21-year-old Fahad Naseem, did not appear at the hearing.

Among the suspects still at large is Amjad Faruqi, who has variously used the aliases Haider Farooq and Hasan Mansoor. Hussain is believed to have carried out the kidnapping.

The others are Asim, Hashim Qadeer, Hasan, Imtiaz Siddiqi, Ahmed Bhai and one another unnamed person who is believed to have photographed Pearl.

Three of the suspects are Arab nationals, suggesting a link to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist network.

However, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that it was too soon to say that al-Qaida was linked to the Pearl kidnapping and murder.

Those appearing in court Monday were Saeed, 28, and two men accused of sending e-mails announcing Pearl’s Jan. 23 kidnapping. U.S. and Pakistani authorities on Friday revealed the contents of a grisly videotape showing Pearl’s dead body, which has not been found.

The accused had already surrendered or been arrested by the time the videotape became public. The tape does not indicate when or where the slaying took place.

CLOSED DEPOSITION

In a closed deposition last week, Naseem admitted sending e-mails announcing Pearl’s kidnapping on orders of Saeed. Police had already found the e-mails on Naseem’s laptop computer.

“My line of defense will be that he’s a man who became part of this without realizing its gravity,” said Naveed, who is representing the three accused e-mailers.

Naseem sent the e-mails — one of which included a photograph of the 38-year-old journalist with a gun to his head — without knowing their contents, Naveed claimed. Naveed said he has not been allowed to see Naseem or his other two clients since they were taken into custody two weeks ago.

Kidnapping and murder are capital offenses in Pakistan.

Naveed said the two co-defendants — Sheikh Mohammed Adeel, a constable with the police department’s special branch, and Naseem’s cousin, Salman Saqib — have not confessed to any crime and will not do so.

Mohammed Aslam, Adeel’s brother, insisted Monday that Adeel was innocent but confirmed that his brother has been involved in Islamic “holy war” activities for years. As early as December, he said Adeel spent time in Afghanistan to support that country’s now ousted Taliban regime.

U.S. SOUGHT SAEED BEFORE ABDUCTION

British-born Saeed was taken into custody Feb. 5. He told interrogators that his group wanted to teach the United States a lesson and that Pearl’s murder was just a first step, intelligence officials said.

Newsweek magazine reported Sunday that Saeed has been indicted in the United States for the kidnapping of four Western tourists — three Britons and an American — in 1994, raising the possibility that he could eventually be extradited.

The United States and Pakistan do not have an extradition treaty, however.

Nevertheless, Rumsfeld said the United States might still seek extradition.

“The United States government may very well want to try to extradite the people involved if possible for the killing of an American, which would seem to me as a non-lawyer to be a reasonable thing,” Rumsfeld said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

In the event that extradition is sought, the Justice Department is currently considering convening a U.S. grand jury in the case for the purpose of issuing indictments, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

If the federal grand jury does indeed go ahead, the United States may hold it in the Eastern District of Virginia, where two high profile suspects — Zacarias Moussaoui and John Walker Lindh — already are awaiting trial for terrorism related crimes. The other possibility, the Journal reported, is the District of Columbia.

BIN LADEN LINK?

Authorities offered little information Sunday about the identity of the three Arab suspects wanted in the case or what role they may have played. But their alleged involvement — combined with investigators’ revelation that Saeed said he met personally with bin Laden in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States — suggested an al-Qaida link.

Police believe a dozen or more people were involved in Pearl’s abduction and murder, and that most of them have spent time in Afghanistan as supporters of the Taliban.

Before his abduction, Pearl had been investigating alleged links between Pakistani militants and Richard C. Reid, who was arrested in December for allegedly trying to ignite explosives in his sneakers during a Paris-Miami flight.

With Saeed in jail, the prime target of a massive police dragnet is Amjad Faruqi, who is believed to have carried out the kidnapping. A senior police investigator said one detainee said he met Faruqi several times and each time Faruqi was accompanied by three Arabs.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

THE SUSPECTS: Death of Reporter Puts Focus on Pakistan's Intelligence Unit

Top 108. Feb 25, 2002 8:17 AM

» JenL_2 - Pearl Investigation Focus on ISI

This from 2/25 New York Times International:

By DOUGLAS JEHL

In October 1994, a gleeful young kidnapper walked into a house in Saharanpur, north of New Delhi, to tell three British tourists chained to the floor that he had sent authorities an ultimatum: Release a group of Islamic militants from Indian jails, or the hostages will die.

"We've just told the press we're going to behead you," said Ahmed Omar Sheikh, a 21-year- old who once studied at the London School of Economics, as Rhys Partridge, one of the hostages, remembered it. "He was laughing," Mr. Partridge said in a recent interview. "The prospect excited him."

Mr. Sheikh's plans went awry when he was captured and his captives released. But after five years awaiting trial, he was freed, along with two other Islamic militants, in exchange for more than 160 people aboard an Indian Airlines jet that had been hijacked from Katmandu, Nepal.

Mr. Partridge was aghast. "I got to know the guy and I got to know his agenda, and I made it very apparent to anyone who would listen that he would continue to do this kind of stuff," he said. "He would take hostages again. He would murder people, given the opportunity."

The opportunity may have presented itself last month when Mr. Sheikh, now 28 and close to a Pakistani militant group known as the Army of Muhammad, apparently enticed a Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl, to a meeting that led to his abduction on Jan. 23 and brutal execution.

Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, has vowed to prosecute everyone involved, an inquiry that could well raise the lid on one of the more unsavory chapters in this country's recent history: the ties between radical Islamic groups and Pakistan's main intelligence service.

Pakistani military and intelligence officials with knowledge of the events disclosed that a Pakistani intelligence officer played a key role in nurturing the Army of Muhammad after its formation in 2000 and also helped facilitate Mr. Sheikh's frequent travels between Afghanistan and Pakistan, his ancestral home.

That intelligence officer, Brigadier Abdullah, who uses one name, was among those who were pushed aside late last year as President Musharraf began his shake-up of the country's powerful and secretive spy service, known as Inter-Services Intelligence, or I.S.I.

Mr. Sheikh told a Pakistani court earlier this month and American and Pakistani interrogators that he helped kidnap Mr. Pearl. But his statements raised as many questions as they answered. Did he act with accomplices and, if so, was a former Pakistani police official among them, as some say? Was someone giving orders to him? If so, why have they not been apprehended? Why was Mr. Sheikh allowed to turn himself in to a former Inter- Services Intelligence agency official on Feb. 5, and why did the local police issue misleading statements for a week indicating that he was still at large?

The intelligence agency's past actions indicate that its interests — or, at a minimum, those of former agency officials — have often dovetailed with the interests of Mr. Pearl's kidnappers, as reflected in their original demands. New disclosures of links between Mr. Sheikh and two recently dismissed agency officials only intensify suspicions about the its role in this case.

The intelligence agency came to prominence during the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, when it served as the C.I.A.'s paymaster, funneling billions of dollars in covert aid to the Afghan rebels. More recently, it has been the main instrument of Pakistan's covert policies in the region, cultivating close ties with the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan and with radical Islamic groups seeking to lay claim to the Indian provinces of Jammu and Kashmir.

When Mr. Sheikh was freed from an Indian prison in 1999, he and two other freed prisoners became affiliated with the newly minted group, the Army of Muhammad. It was one of several militant groups with close links to Pakistani intelligence, particularly to Brigadier Abdullah, who headed Inter-Services Intelligence's Kashmir department.

All this raises a delicate issue for President Musharraf and also for the United States, which has forged a much closer relationship with Pakistan since Sept. 11. Two days before the kidnapping of Mr. Pearl, the American ambassador in Islamabad asked Pakistan to hand over Mr. Sheikh in connection with the 1994 kidnapping, in which an American was also held captive. Before Pakistan did anything, Mr. Pearl was abducted.

Not surprisingly, India is pointing the finger at Pakistan.

The Indian foreign minister, Jaswant Singh, who accompanied Mr. Sheikh and two other Islamic militants to Kandahar, Afghanistan, in exchange for the release of the passengers aboard the hijacked jetliner, told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo last week that "Omar was allowed to live peacefully in Pakistan till he kidnapped another American. But I do not want to sound bitter."

In Pakistan, an editorial in the English language newspaper, The News, raised much the same question this weekend. "Any doubts about incompetence or deliberate mishandling of the Pearl case, or similar cases in the future, will have to be removed."

Enlisting Militancy
Pakistani Intelligence Fuels a Guerrilla War

During the 1980's, Inter-Services Intelligence became Pakistan's most influential political and foreign policy force. At the time, its operatives were allowed extraordinary leeway in forging contacts with Islamic militants in Afghanistan and in the disputed territory of Kashmir, according to senior Pakistani officials and a broad range of published accounts, including the book, "Holy War Inc." (Simon & Schuster: 2001), which details these contacts; the author is Peter L. Bergen, a terrorism analyst on CNN.

After the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the onset of a guerrilla war in Kashmir gave the agency a politically more potent reason for being — as the force to nurture a guerrilla conflict against India, through the proxy of militant Islamic groups.

The United States government grew increasingly concerned about the activities of its former partner. That year, in a confidential letter to Nawaz Sharif, then Pakistan's prime minister, President George Bush quietly warned that he might have to declare Pakistan a terrorist state if the cross-border attacks into India, paid for and orchestrated by Inter-Services Intelligence, did not cease, according to a former Pakistani official who said he has seen the letter.

The rise of the Taliban only added to that Pakistani-American gulf. While the United States soured on the force, Pakistan, through its intelligence agency, helped sustain it, solidifying links built on kinship, Islamic solidarity and longstanding personal and institutional allegiance.

Similar ties were being forged with various militant groups based in Pakistan, who were recruiting young Muslim men to join them. Mr. Sheikh, who at 19 had been radicalized when he learned of the atrocities against Bosnian Muslims, was ripe for recruitment. In the spring of his first year at the London School of Economics, he went on a relief mission to Bosnia.

He described the recruitment in a diary entry, verified by his attorney and written while in prison in India awaiting trial for the 1994 kidnappings:

"April 93. Go with Convoy of Mercy up to Split in Croatia. Too ill to accompany them into Bosnia. Meet Mujahedeen going into Bosnia who recommend training in Afghanistan first. Back for England with recommendation letter from Abdur Rauf for Harkat ul- Mujahedeen. Try to get back into academic to prepare for exams. Still attending talks by various groups. Can't settle down. Leave for Pakistan. Go to Lahore office of Harkat ul- Mujahedeen."

Harkat ul-Mujahedeen was a Pakistan- based group whose aim was ending Indian rule in Kashmir.

After some travel and training in Afghanistan, Mr. Sheikh was given an assignment: kidnap American, British and French tourists who could be traded for the freedom of Maulana Masood Azhar, the Harkat leader jailed by the Indian government in 1994.

Mr. Sheikh lured Mr. Partridge into captivity in September of that year; two other Britons were taken two weeks later. In late October, an American, Bela Nuss, became the fourth hostage, held at a separate house.

Mr. Sheikh, an impetuous young man who, according to the diary, annoyed superiors by overstepping his mandate, was not successful in the operation. Indian police stumbled onto the plot, arrested Mr. Sheikh, and freed both Mr. Nuss and the British hostages.

In prison, Mr. Sheikh met Mr. Azhar, the man he had hoped to free.

Indian officials say the two men were in Tihar prison for almost two years. "They became thick friends in Tihar," said an Indian intelligence officer who interviewed both men.

"Masood Azhar would use religion as a tool to influence people," he said. "But this fellow Omar Sheikh was a very sharp boy. He studied a mind and thought how he could manipulate you. He didn't use religion."

Mr. Sheikh and Mr. Azhar and a third man were freed after the 1999 hijacking.

On the Move
Out of Prison, Out of the Spotlight

As early as January 2000, Pakistani military officers say, Mr. Azhar formed a new group, The Army of Muhammad (or Jaish-e- Muhammad).

Mr. Azhar, then 32 years old, returned to Pakistan to renew his angry call for jihad in Kashmir at raucous rallies in the port city of Karachi.

Mr. Azhar's high-profile role soon ran afoul of Pakistani authorities, particularly General Musharraf, who had taken power in late 1999. By December 2001, Mr. Azhar was under house arrest.

Much less is known about Mr. Sheikh. For instance, he was not listed in any official Pakistani records as having returned from Afghanistan, where he was sent after being freed from jail, according to Pakistani officials.

Mr. Sheikh apparently did spend much time in Afghanistan, a base for the Kashmir militants. But he did not steer clear of Pakistan. He was spotted by Indian intelligence on a number of occasions, according to senior Indian officials, including once in early 2001, at a bookstore in Islamabad, the capital.

The Indian officials say they believe that he traveled frequently, with his new wife and infant son, to Lahore, where his parents had been born and relatives still lived. According to two Pakistani military officials, officers of a smaller, less powerful intelligence agency, the Military Intelligence Branch, then headed by Lt. Gen. Ehsanul Haq, had urged caution in allowing Mr. Sheikh to return, fearing that his years in an Indian jail might have turned him into an enemy agent.

To explain his apparent ease of travel, the officials suggested that Mr. Sheikh may have drawn on clandestine contacts with the former Inter-Services Intelligence officer known as Brigadier Abdullah, the head of the Kashmir cell, and, some now speculate, also with Brig. Ejaz Shah. He is a former agency official who had become home secretary in the Punjab, Mr. Sheikh's native province.

Mr. Sheikh's growing profile among Islamic militants did not go unnoticed in the West. A year ago, the American and British governments seemed interested in taking him out of circulation, or so Rhys Partridge and Bela Nuss, two of the 1994 hostages, say they were told when they were questioned by British and F.B.I. agents.

The F.B.I. agents indicated that the former hostages would be giving evidence to a grand jury in the United States last spring, but then backed off, saying they were not needed.

It is unclear whether Mr. Sheikh was ever indicted in the United States. But a request last month that Pakistan turn over Mr. Sheikh would most likely have been made only if there were outstanding charges against Mr. Sheikh in the United States.

In January in Karachi, according to Mr. Sheikh's own courtroom statements, he replayed his role as a kidnapper. So far, three other suspects have been charged in the Pearl case, and investigators say that all have identified Mr. Sheikh as the man who directed them to send e-mail messages to Western news organizations that included photographs of the reporter in captivity. At least five others are being sought, Pakistani officials say.

Cracking Down
Pakistan's President Tackles Radicalism

Even as he pledges to find the rest of the kidnappers, President Musharraf is pursuing a broader crackdown on militants, promised in January, with 2,000 arrests announced so far. The purpose is to rein in the Islamic extremist organizations that Pakistan had condoned or supported over the years.

And within Inter-Services Intelligence, he has begun what military and intelligence officials describe as a major purge, including the effective dismantling of the Kashmir and Afghanistan cells.

One of the first to go, according to those officers, was the commander known as Brigadier Abdullah, the head of the Kashmir cell who helped forge ties with the Army of Muhammad and, those officers assert, helped facilitate Mr. Sheikh's travels between Afghanistan and Pakisan.

The overlapping of the crackdown, the intelligence purge, and Mr. Pearl's murder have added to the mystery surrounding the crime, including the question of whether it might have been carried out with the knowledge or support of current or former Pakistani intelligence officials.

At least so far, there has been no indication that Mr. Azhar, the Army of Muhammad leader who returned so quickly to Pakistan, played any role in the kidnapping. He has remained under house arrest.

But one of the four suspects now in police custody for the kidnapping has been identified as Sheikh Mohammad Adeel, a former constable in a special branch of the Karachi police that had responsibility for terrorism. And even today, no one in authority has resolved conflicting accounts of where Mr. Sheikh was between Feb. 5, when he has said he turned himself in, and Feb. 12, when his arrest was announced.

During the intervening week, Pakistani police officials gave optimistic interviews indicating that they were on the verge of capturing Mr. Sheikh.

But this weekend, two Pakistani law enforcement officials, confirmed that Mr. Sheikh had turned himself in on Feb. 5 to Brigadier Shah, the Punjab home secretary and former I.S.I. official. It is not clear why news of his surrender was kept quiet for a week while Pakistani police said the hunt for Mr. Sheikh continued.

The arrest of Mr. Sheikh was announced at the time of General Musharraf's visit to Washington, a full week after he was taken into custody.

If Pakistani officials' decision to let him surrender was part of some attempt to seek a negotiated handover of Mr. Pearl, it failed. On Feb. 1, Mr. Sheikh had received a coded message from his confederates telling him that Mr. Pearl was already dead, according to the account that he has given to his interrogators in Karachi and which they now regard as credible.

The days-long negotiations, some Pakistani investigators now say, may have been a delaying tactic to allow Mr. Sheikh's associates to escape.

In an interview, the American Ambassador to Pakistan, Wendy Chamberlin, went out of her way to praise Pakistan for leading the effort to find those responsible for Mr. Pearl's abduction and murder.

"Cooperation has been extremely good, and the Pakistani authorities are showing much aggressiveness as we proceed," she said on Friday. State Department officials in Washington echoed that sentiment.

If there was any kind of collusion between operatives and militants, Pakistani intelligence officials now insist, it would almost certainly have involved former I.S.I. officers, rather than those now serving under General Ehsan, who was formerly the director of Military Intelligence. General Musharraf installed him as the Inter-Services Intelligence chief last fall with a mandate to sever ties to terrorist groups.

But after so many years of tangled ties between Pakistan's government and the militants, few in Pakistan even now claim to understand the full picture, and they say that the murder of Mr. Pearl has only underscored how fraught the situation remains.

"Our journey is not a short one to control the terrorists," the interior minister, Moinuddin Haider, said this week.

This article was reported by Douglas Jehl, Celia W. Dugger and Felicity Barringer and was written by Mr. Jehl.

Lot's of gaps in this report.....lots of stuff reported on in articles above have been left out....I wonder why?.....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

Al Qaeda connection pursued in Pearl case

Top 109. Feb 25, 2002 8:30 AM

» JenL_2 - Pearl Investigation - al-Qaida Connection

This one from 2/25 Boston Globe:

By Colin Nickerson, Globe Staff, Globe Correspondent, 2/25/2002

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan police and investigators from the United States are pursuing the possibility that the kidnapping-murder of an American journalist is linked to Al Qaeda, the terrorist organization held responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

In a strange twist, there appears to be a North American connection to the gruesome execution of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. A few days before Pearl disappeared on Jan. 23, one of the most wanted suspects in the kidnapping, Amjad Hussain Farooqi, allegedly made a call to Canada from his home village in Punjab Province and was overheard saying, ''I will complete the mission.''

Two Pakistani sources close to the investigation confirmed that Farooqi made that call to Canada before the kidnapping and several others after Pearl's abduction. One source said police obtained details of the ''complete the mission'' conversation from a man who operates public telephones from his shop in the settlement of Pir Mahal.

The sources declined to say what city in Canada was called or whether the calls have been traced.

Other sources said yesterday that Pearl's slayers are now thought to have taken marching orders from outside Pakistan, possibly from Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, which has tentacles in scores of violence-prone Islamic movements in Asia, Africa, the Mideast, and Europe, as well as Canada and the United States. Bin Laden is a Saudi and most Al Qaeda operatives are Arabs.

''The idea of Al Qaeda involvement at first seemed far-fetched,'' said a Pakistan official involved in the investigation. ''Now the belief is that this is terrorism orchestrated from afar, not a home-grown conspiracy.''

Evidence of players outside Pakistan mounts

Government and police sources stressed that this is only one theory in a baffling case, but also said it is fast becoming the dominant one amid mounting evidence of the involvement of figures from outside Pakistan.

Police say they are convinced that at least one of Farooqi's key accomplices is an Arab, most probably a national of a Persian Gulf state - an outsider, in any event, whose involvement lends a dimension of international terrorism to a crime originally thought to be the work of a small band of Pakistani fanatics.

Two other Arab nationals may also have played a hand in the horrific crime, according to a police source.

Pearl was decapitated by his captors, who recorded the mutilation on videotape passed to the US Consulate in Karachi.

Four militant Muslims are under arrest in the case, including British-born Sheik Ahmad Omar Saeed, a graduate of the London School of Economics and, later, the terror training camps of Afghanistan.

Police contend that Saeed plotted the kidnapping, but that Farooqi and other accomplices snatched Pearl near the Village restaurant in downtown Karachi, kept him in a hiding place, and executed him within a few days of the kidnapping.

Pearl's body has not been found.

Police say killers may be hiding on tribal land

The focus of the massive police search for the killers shifted away from the southern port city of Karachi to the borderlands of North-West Frontier Province.

Police said Pearl's killers, including Farooqi and the mysterious Arab, may be hiding in the vast and nearly lawless Pashtun tribal lands bordering Afghanistan, the same mountain fastness where bin Laden himself may have taken refuge as American bombs smashed Al Qaeda lairs in the US-led military campaign. Sympathies for the Taliban and, to a lesser extent, Al Qaeda are high in tribal regions only nominally governed by Pakistan, and killers of an American would probably be protected as courageous holy warriors.

Pearl, 38, was kidnapped while researching an article about possible connections between Al Qaeda and Richard C. Reid, who faces federal charges in Massachusetts for allegedly trying to ignite an explosive charge in his sneakers during a Paris-Miami flight.

The 31/2-minute tape of Pearl's execution consists of several spliced segments, and investigators contend Pearl was already dead when his captors slashed his throat on camera then severed his neck.

In earlier segments, Pearl, apparently under coercion, woodenly acknowledges that he is a Jew and the son of Jews. He also recites scripted lines about Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners incarcerated at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and accuses the United States of oppressing Muslims.

Throughout the video, images of Afghanistan, including buildings apparently destroyed by American bombing, are shown on a split screen alongside images of Pearl, according to a source familiar with the tape.

Saeed, whom the United States may seek to extradite from Pakistan on charges of killing an American, boasted to Pakistan police of his ties to Al Qaeda and claimed to have met with bin Laden in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks.

A source close to the investigation said Saeed has told Pakistan that the murder of Pearl was meant to ''teach a lesson to the US'' and that it is just the curtain-raiser to more attacks on Americans and US interests in Pakistan.

Fearing the slaying may signal a wider plan to thwart the government's drive against terrorism, Pakistani authorities over the weekend warned US and other foreign diplomatic missions and businesses to boost their security.

Farooqi and his Arab accomplice or accomplices are subjects of a manhunt involving thousands of Pakistani police, scores of FBI agents, and, according to one Pakistani source, US Special Forces soldiers.

Much of the search is now being conducted in the forbidding barrens stretching southwest from the legendary Khyber Pass to Balochistan Province.

Little is known about Farooqi except that he is an Islamic radical and a veteran of the bloody insurgency in the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir, claimed by Muslim Pakistan but largely occupied by Hindu-dominated India.

It is not known for certain why the militants kidnapped and killed Pearl.

''They seemed to want revenge for American actions in Afghanistan,'' said a source close to the investigation. ''The other motive was perhaps to embarrass and destabilize the Pakistan government for supporting the US.''

Saeed was imprisoned for 1994 kidnappings

Newsweek reported yesterday that Saeed was secretly indicted by the US Justice Department in November for the 1994 kidnapping of four Western tourists, including an American, in India. The magazine, quoting a Bush administration official, said US officials were attempting to have Saeed arrested just before Pearl was abducted, Reuters reported.

Saeed was imprisoned in India for the 1994 kidnapping, staged to demand the release of jailed Islamic extremists. He was freed in 1999 in exchange for passengers of a hijacked Indian plane.

Globe correspondent Absar Alam contributed to this report.

Sheesh - even more gaps in this account! No doubt that the al-Qaida is connected to Pearl's kidnapping somehow since Omar Saeed is connected to the al-Qaida, but so was (is?) officials in the Pak ISI....so IMHO Pak gov is trying to shift attention away from the Pak ISI to the al-Qaida.....but maybe I'm just being overly suspicious!....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

Pakistanis fear video of throat-slitting may be sold

Top 110. Feb 25, 2002 8:55 AM

» JenL_2 - Pearl Investigation - Omar Saeed

One more from 2/25 USA Today World

By Elliot Blair Smith, USA TODAY

As Pakistani police hunt for the murderers of American journalist Daniel Pearl, the alleged mastermind of the reporter's kidnapping is due to be arraigned Monday.

British-born Islamic extremist Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who has previously said he's responsible for Pearl's abduction, appeared before an anti-terrorism court in the southern port city of Karachi. A judge ordered him held for two more weeks.

Meanwhile, Pakistani officials say they are worried that copies of the videotape that confirms Pearl's murder may show up for sale in Pakistani shops within a few days. The videotape, U.S. and Pakistani officials say, shows the journalist being forced to acknowledge he is Jewish. It shows Pearl's throat being slit while he either was unconscious or already dead.

It isn't yet clear when the tape was made or how long Pearl was kept alive after his Jan. 23 abduction in Karachi, authorities say.

Authorities in Pakistan assume Pearl's killers made more than one copy of the videotape, and that in a country where Osama bin Laden monologues and al-Qaeda training films are readily available, it's likely the grisly footage will also surface.

Before his abduction, Pearl, 38, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, had been investigating a story on links between Pakistani militants and alleged "shoe bomber" Richard Reid. Shortly after his kidnapping, e-mails sent to journalists and authorities claimed he was being held by captors seeking better treatment for Pakistanis imprisoned at U.S. detention facilities.

Thursday, authorities in Pakistan announced they had obtained a video confirming his death.

Sunday, police said they are looking for three Arab nationals who may have been involved in the kidnapping and murder. The search for Arab suspects suggests there may be a connection between the kidnappers and bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network.

Until Feb. 12, when authorities announced his arrest, Saeed had apparently lived quite openly in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore despite a radical past.

Saeed was arrested in India in 1994 and served five years behind bars for kidnapping an American and two Britons. He was released in 1999 in exchange for the freedom of 155 hostages on a hijacked Indian Airlines flight.

Saeed's parents are wealthy London clothing merchants. Pakistani officials deny knowing Saeed was living in Lahore, but his in-laws own a prosperous trucking company there. It's well known Saeed's wife and her family live in a two-house compound valued at more than $500,000. Neighbors and a real estate agent say the family moved there in November.

Neighbors are also careful to say they have never spotted Saeed at the house. Three cousins at the house who refer to him as a "brother" declined to comment.

Pakistan has tried to blame India for the Pearl kidnapping, accusing its archrival of trying to destabilize President Pervez Musharraf's government. India has said that Pakistan gave Saeed safe haven and that Saeed was involved in October's attack on India's Parliament.

B. Raman, a former chief of India's spy services, says Saeed was "frequently seen" at Lahore parties hosted by Pakistani government officials and "made no secret of his stay in Lahore."

more details to fill in the gaps in these articles by South Asia Analysis Group:

The Daniel Pearl's Case

for more than you ever wanted to know about Pak ISI connections to Pak Extremist Militant groups, the Taliban and al-Qaida... just read some of the articles posted at that site, and follow some of the names of ISI officials mentioned, including one not mentioned in the articles above, Gen. Mohammad Aziz Khan

also there's this article at 10/6 CNN.com:

Suspected hijack bankroller freed by India in '99

....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

Top 111. Feb 25, 2002 2:17 PM

» JenL_2 - Re: Pearl Investigation - Omar Saeed

In response to message posted by JenL_2:

Some quotes above don't jive:

in 2/25 Boston Globe:
Newsweek reported yesterday that Saeed was secretly indicted by the US Justice Department in November for the 1994 kidnapping of four Western tourists, including an American, in India. The magazine, quoting a Bush administration official, said US officials were attempting to have Saeed arrested just before Pearl was abducted, Reuters reported.

Saeed was imprisoned in India for the 1994 kidnapping, staged to demand the release of jailed Islamic extremists. He was freed in 1999 in exchange for passengers of a hijacked Indian plane.
http://www.suite101.com/discussion.cfm/i...

in 2/25 New York Times:
Mr. Sheikh's growing profile among Islamic militants did not go unnoticed in the West. A year ago, the American and British governments seemed interested in taking him out of circulation, or so Rhys Partridge and Bela Nuss, two of the 1994 hostages, say they were told when they were questioned by British and F.B.I. agents.

The F.B.I. agents indicated that the former hostages would be giving evidence to a grand jury in the United States last spring, but then backed off, saying they were not needed.

So was Saeed indicted by the U.S. a year ago or 2 months ago? And why now for a kidnapping that occurred in 1994, and after he spent 5 years in an Indian jail for the kidnapping before being released in 1999 in a hostage exchange for the Indian Airlines hi-jacking?

And why didn't our CIA know that he was living freely in Lahore, Pakistan?

And why no mention of the charges that Saeed wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta prior to the 9/11 attacks - and that Atta even wired the excess funds back to Saeed prior to the attacks?
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/10/05/inv.ter...

Omar Saeed's written confession while jailed in India is published at Harpers.com:
http://www.harpers.org/online/diary_of_a...

Statements from his hostages are at IndiaExpress.com:
http://www.indian-express.com/ie20020208...

.....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

Top 112. Feb 25, 2002 6:16 PM

» BPyles - Possible Canadian link to Pearl

Feb. 25, 05:36 EDT
Canadian link to Pearl murder probed

Most wanted suspect phoned contact here, Pakistani police say

By Bruce Cheadle Canadian Press

OTTAWA (CP) — Pakistani police are apparently investigating a Canadian connection in the kidnapping and murder of an American journalist, prompting an Alliance MP to say the plot "may have been planned or directed from this ountry."

Amjad Faruqi, the most wanted suspect still at large in the murder of Daniel Pearl, is reported to have been in regular telephone contact with someone in Canada.

"How can the government repeatedly assure Canadians that terrorists are not operating within this country when the killers of Daniel Pearl may have received their marching orders from the al-Qaida masters here in Canada," Alliance MP Rahim Jaffer said today in the Commons.

Solicitor General Lawrence MacAulay called it shameful that Jaffer would engage in such speculation.

In an interview, MacAulay refused to confirm or deny that the RCMP or the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service are investigating.

"The fact of the matter is, things can happen from anywhere in the world," said MacAulay.

"Phones do work in this country, yes it's possible."

The most recent series of calls, according to Pakistani police, occurred last month around the
time of the kidnapping of Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter.

Police say Faruqi appeared from time to time at a public telephone exchange in the town of Kamilia, near his home in Punjab province. Faruqi would place one call to Canada, announcing he would be available at the number for a few days. He would then receive a number of return calls from Canada.

The location of the Canadian connection was not provided.

Pearl's body has not been found but a video showing his murder and decapitation was sent
to a Pakistani journalist, who passed it on to the U.S. consulate in Karachi last Thursday.

Four men are under arrest, including Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, the alleged British-born mastermind of the kidnapping.

Faruqi, who has a number of aliases, is believed to be the person who actually kidnapped Pearl. Faruqi was known to Pearl by the name of Imtiaz Siddiqi and placed two calls to the reporter to set up a meeting on the night Pearl disappeared.

Faruqi is a member of Harkat ul-Mujahedeen, a banned Islamic extremist group with ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.

Neither the RCMP nor CSIS would comment on the reports of the Canadian telephone traffic.

-----------
Jen: Have read all your post with interest and agree, lots of unanswered questions. Think a lot of the fault is probably reporters...am getting skeptical of so much I read anymore...half truths, sloppy reporting or whatever.

-- posted by BPyles

Top 113. Feb 25, 2002 9:36 PM

» JenL_2 - Re: Maulana Masood Azhar

from India's Top 20 Terrorist List in 1/13 Guardian posted above:

Maulana Masood Azhar is the leader of Jaish-i-Mohammad (Army of the Prophet Muhammad), the group blamed for the attack on India's parliament on December 13, 2001 which pushed the two nuclear neighbours to the verge of war.

His group is also blamed for the suicide attack on the Jammu and Kashmir State Legislative Assembly in which 38 people were killed on October 1 last year. Azhar was arrested in Indian-adminstered Kashmir in 1994 and was released at Kandahar in exchange for the crew and passengers of an Indian airliner which was hijacked during a routine Kathmandu-New Delhi flight in December, 2000.

Azhar is believed to be very close to the Taliban. Jaish conducted three suicide attacks inside Kashmir before the Parliament attack. One of the suicide attacks launched by the group on the Kashmir headquarters of the Indian Army on the eve of Chrismas in 2000 involved a British Muslim - Mohammad Bilal.

Jaish is an offshoot of another Jihadi group, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, which was alleged to be responsible for the kidnapping of five western tourists in 1995, one of whom was a Norwegian who was later killed. The fate of the other tourists is still not known. Jaish-e-Mohammad claims to be fighting to establish a puritan Islamic rule in the Muslim world and seeks an end to Indian rule in Muslim-dominated Kashmir.

Steven - presently Maulana Masood Azhar is under house arrest in Pakistan, correct? And I haven't seen any reports in the media connecting him to the Pearl abduction.

But there's this report of his Somalia Connection in 2/25 LATimes:

<img src="http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2002-..." width=400 height=300 align="left">Maulana Masood Azhar, leader of the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, admitted to advising Somalian fighters, Indian police say.(AP)

Somalian Link Seen to Al Qaeda

By PAUL WATSON and SIDHARTHA BARUA, Special To The Times

JAMMU, India -- A Pakistani terrorist who Indian police say admitted to aiding the 1993 street war against U.S. forces in Somalia may be the long-suspected link between Osama bin Laden and the killing of 18 U.S. soldiers in Mogadishu.

Evidence of the Al Qaeda connection to the fighting in the Somalian capital has been sitting in an Indian police file in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir since 1994, when Indian police arrested Maulana Masood Azhar. His supporters have been accused of kidnapping and killing Americans in India and Pakistan during at least the past seven years.

Azhar, leader of the banned militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, also is the mentor of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, whom Pakistani authorities arrested as the lead suspect in the kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

In a prison diary on file in an Indian court, Sheikh also admitted to kidnapping Californian Bela Josef Nuss and three British backpackers in October 1994 in a failed bid to spring Azhar from jail.

And FBI agents questioned Azhar in connection with the 1995 kidnapping in Kashmir of an American hiker, who is presumed to have been killed.

Azhar told Indian police after his arrest in Kashmir that he traveled to Nairobi, Kenya, in 1993 to meet with leaders of the Somalian group Al-Ittihad al-Islamiya, which the U.S. accuses of receiving Al Qaeda's help to train Somalian fighters for attacks on U.S. forces.

Azhar said the Somalis asked for assistance and got recruits and money from the ranks of a Pakistani militant group that Washington later named as part of Bin Laden's terrorist network.

According to the confession, Azhar was dispatched to meet with the Somalis by another Pakistani militant, Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil.

U.S. Suspected Somalis Were Al Qaeda-Trained

The Somalian group surfaced again after the Sept. 11 attacks, when U.S. officials identified it as a possible target for airstrikes.

U.S. officials have long suspected an Al Qaeda connection to the 1993 Somalian conflict. The alleged link was central to the prosecutors' case in the trial of four men convicted last year of the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.

Prosecutors argued that members of the same Kenya-based cell that helped train Somalis to kill U.S. soldiers in 1993 went on to carry out the 1998 embassy bombings, which have been blamed on Bin Laden. At least one of the four men convicted in the embassy bombings was a member of the Somalian group, FBI special agent John Anticev testified.

Indian intelligence officials claim Azhar not only traveled to Kenya but made as many as three journeys to Somalia and was a key player in the Al Qaeda operation there.

Azhar told Indian police that in his meetings, Al-Ittihad leaders complained that Pakistan's army, which was taking part in the international mission in Somalia, "is working in favor of America and America is trying to establish its rule in Somalia."

Al-Ittihad benefited from Pakistan's decision in 1993, under international pressure, to expel between 400 and 500 foreign veterans of the Afghan war, according to Azhar's confession.

Most did not go home, either because they weren't allowed to or because they feared persecution, Azhar said. Instead, the majority went to Sudan, where Bin Laden was then based, and from there to Somalia, Azhar said. The "militants continued the correspondence with us from Somalia," he said.

Senior Indian intelligence sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the clandestine nature of their work, say they also believe Azhar helped bring mercenaries from Yemen to Somalia with the help of Yemeni militant leader Tariq Nasr Fadhli.

Tariq is said to have fought under Bin Laden's command in Afghanistan's guerrilla war against Soviet troops in the 1980s. Tariq, reportedly at Bin Laden's bidding, then led a guerrilla war against the Marxist government of South Yemen, which collapsed in 1994 and once again became part of Yemen.

Yemeni authorities identified Tariq as a suspect in two December 1992 hotel bombings in Yemen that targeted U.S. Marines headed for Somalia. The explosions killed a tourist and a hotel worker.

Indian authorities arrested Azhar in Kashmir in February 1994, after he arrived from Karachi, Pakistan, on a fake Portuguese passport. They say he was headed to Kashmir on a mission to unite militants fighting Indian rule in the Himalayan region.

But during interrogation, Azhar also provided information on the Somalian operation, which just four months earlier had inflicted the heaviest casualties U.S. forces had suffered in a single battle since Vietnam.

The apparent Somalian link takes up less than two typed pages in a confession of more than a dozen pages. Azhar also spoke about his interest in the Somalian conflict as a magazine editor, fund-raiser and traveling spokesman for Harkat Ansar, one of Pakistan's most ruthless terrorist groups.

India freed Azhar, Sheikh and another jailed terror suspect in December 1999 to win the release of passengers on an Indian Airlines flight hijacked to Afghanistan.

Azhar then founded the Jaish-e-Mohammed militia. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf banned the organization in his January crackdown on militants, when Azhar was accused of making inflammatory speeches and Pakistani police detained him. India says he has clear ties to both Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency and Al Qaeda, and that his fighters continue to launch attacks in Jammu and Kashmir state.

FBI Had Questioned Azhar on Kidnappings

The FBI also has had a long interest in Azhar.

It questioned him in Indian jails during an investigation into the July 4, 1995, kidnapping of Donald Hutchings, a neuropsychologist from Spokane, Wash. He was abducted along with two Britons, a German and another American, John Childs, who managed to escape.

The decapitated body of a Norwegian kidnapped after Childs fled was dropped on a mountain path, and police recovered the body of a British hostage two years ago. None of the other captives was ever found.

Officials at New Delhi's Tihar jail say the FBI interviewed Azhar there in 1996. On April 27, 1998, the U.S. Embassy asked permission for two FBI agents to interview Azhar again, along with three of his jailed supporters. Indian authorities said it appeared that the 1998 request was granted.

The embassy letter, signed by charge d'affaires E. Ashley Wills, said FBI agents were still investigating the Kashmir kidnappings, which Indian police blamed on a breakaway faction of Harkat Ansar.

Khalil, Harkat's supreme leader, added his signature to Bin Laden's February 1998 fatwa declaring it a Muslim's duty to kill Americans, including civilians.

Bin Laden claimed credit for the clashes that drove U.S. troops out of Somalia, but some experts dismissed his claims as idle boasting, saying Somalian gunmen had enough expertise and anti-American fervor to fight without outside help. However, federal prosecutors argued in the embassy bombing trial that Bin Laden's 1998 edict, issued under the banner "International Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders," had its roots in the 1993 attacks on U.S. troops in Somalia.

Months after entering Somalia in 1992 to help end its famine, U.S. troops were seeking to arrest warlord Mohammed Farah Aideed, whose militia was blamed for a June 5, 1993, ambush that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

During frequent attempts to grab Aideed or his lieutenants, the Americans used UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters armored to withstand 23-millimeter antiaircraft shells.

On Sept. 25, 1993, Aideed's gunmen managed to bring down their first Black Hawk with a rocket-propelled grenade, a weapon normally used against ground targets. Three U.S. soldiers died in the crash.

Eight days later, rocket-propelled grenades brought down two more Black Hawks in the Oct. 3 battle that left 18 U.S. soldiers dead and about 75 wounded. At least 500 Somalis died in the 16-hour fight. The incident was portrayed in the movie "Black Hawk Down."

A theory emerged that someone had taught Aideed's gunmen how to alter the fuses on the rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs, so that they exploded in midair. Afghan fighters learned from U.S. and British military advisors in the 1980s that a helicopter's weak spot is the tail rotor.

It is hard to hit a tail rotor with ordnance designed to explode on contact, but a grenade exploding in midair could spray it with shrapnel. That is how a man hiding in a tree shot down the first Black Hawk on Oct. 3, setting off a catastrophe that Bin Laden cited five years later as proof of American weakness.

Bin Laden told a CNN interviewer that the Somalis had cooperated with Arab veterans of the Afghan war.

"After a little resistance, the American troops left after achieving nothing," Bin Laden said.

During the embassy bombing trial, federal prosecutors argued that Al Qaeda was involved in the Somalian conflict.

"One of the principal goals of Al Qaeda was to drive the United States armed forces out of Saudi Arabia (and elsewhere on the Saudi Arabian peninsula) and Somalia by violence," prosecutors charged in an indictment that named Bin Laden and other defendants.

Army Pilot Testified in Embassy Bombing Trial

The prosecution's last witness at the embassy bombings trial was James Yacone, a platoon commander who piloted one of the two Black Hawks that dropped troops near Mogadishu's Olympic Hotel.

Yacone said he watched as a rocket-propelled grenade exploded near the tail rotor of the second chopper, piloted by Clifton Wolcott and Donavan Briley. The aircraft spun out of control and crashed, killing them.

Yacone told the jury that he saw more than 100 RPGs fired at helicopters that day, and each exploded about 500 yards in the air.

"I wasn't able to see all the RPGs being shot but, you know, every thirty seconds or so we'd see the streak of smoke and then the puff of where the thing would detonate in the air," Yacone said.

Within minutes after flying in to help, a second Black Hawk was hit by an RPG in the tail boom section and crashed when "their tail rotor just came apart," Yacone said.

An RPG round also hit his Black Hawk, blowing off the door gunner's leg and spraying shrapnel into Yacone's left arm. With the cockpit full of smoke and one of his two engines disabled, Yacone managed to reach the Somalian coast and crash-landed in friendlier territory.

District Court Judge Leonard B. Sand ordered the jury to disregard Yacone's testimony, since Al Qaeda fighters apparently were not directly involved in the incident.

Prosecutor Kenneth Karas continued to press the Al Qaeda connection in Somalia. In his closing argument, he told the jury that testimony had shown Somalia was "a magnet for Al Qaeda people."

Bin Laden issued an edict "to the members of Al Qaeda to do what they can to stop the Americans, to drive them from Somalia," Karas said.

"The specific words that Bin Laden used were, 'We have to cut off the head of the snake,' " Karas said. "As far back as 1993, this is what is on Al Qaeda's mind: the United States presence in Somalia."

....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

Top 114. Feb 26, 2002 8:44 AM

» BPyles - Skepticism of press

Jen:

Another example of reporting at its worst. Both these agencies are supposedly the best...but one is obviously wrong. Just reminded me of all the discussion about lack of facts on other terrorists. This is more about Afghanistan but just good example of my skepticism of press.
------------------
Day One of Afghan boot camp a smashing success! Or was it?
From News Box - Press Watch

By Ned Stafford
07:19 pm, Frankfurt, 25-Feb-2002
01:19 pm, New York

FRANKFURT, Germany – The Associated Press and Reuters are without a doubt two of the greatest news organizations in the world.

But one of them got the story of the first day of boot camp for the new Afghan army wrong.

Big-time wrong.

Kathy Gannon of AP filed a report (See: New Afghan Army Starts Training) Monday (Feb. 25) that begins:

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Boot camp began Monday for the first battalion of the new Afghan army.

Elite troops from five countries began training 600 men representing every province and ethnic group in Afghanistan, said Jonathan Turner, a spokesman for the British-led international peacekeeping force.

Meanwhile, Rosalind Russell of Reuters begins in a report (See: Afghan Boot Camp Fails to Attract Enough Recruits) filed Monday:

KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Foreign soldiers began training the first detachment of a new Afghan army Monday, but hopes of creating a full battalion appeared to be undermined by a lack of recruits.

And a few paragraphs later she writes:

But despite a nationwide information campaign, the interim government has failed to recruit the 600 men needed to form a full battalion.

ISAF spokesman Captain Graham Dunlop said 30 officers and just over 200 rank and file soldiers had signed up. Another 40 were on their way from the southern city of Kandahar, the stronghold of the former Taliban regime.

In other words, AP is reporting a full boot camp of 600 eager Afghan men, while Reuters is saying only around 270 have straggled in for training.

Who is wrong? We do not know yet. But one of these great news organizations is going to have to file an embarrassing correction. The only saving grace will be that each reporter wisely quoted a spokesman by name.

Makes you wonder: Was Mr. Turner trying to put a happy face on an unhappy turnout? Or did someone give Mr. Dunlop the wrong numbers?

The story about this story is going to be interesting.

-- posted by BPyles