India - Pakistan Crisis: Re: Pearl Abduction Investigation

» JenL_2 - Re: Pearl Abduction Investigation

A couple articles on Pearl Murder Investigation

from 2/27 Times of India:

Pak rubbishes claims of ISI-Omar Sheikh links

AGENCIES [ WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2002 11:54:21 PM ]

ISLAMABAD: With the United States pressing for the extradition of Omar Sheikh, Pakistan on Wednesday angrily denied any ties between the Islamic militants and the country’s intelligence services.

Pakistani Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider vowed to bring Pearl’s killers to justice, and said allegations about a link between confessed kidnapper Omar Sheikh and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency were "malicious and wrong propaganda." "We reject these reports completely. There is no question of any linkage," Haider said on the sidelines of a conference on people smuggling in Bali, Indonesia.

President Musharraf has pledged to rid his country of Islamic extremism, but there are still concerns about a decades-old alliance between Islamic militants and Pakistani intelligence - forged through years of fighting common enemies in Afghanistan and in Kashmir.

Pakistan police beefed up security at a Karachi jail after an anonymous phone call threatened a rocket attack if Omar Sheikh was extradited, police sources said.

Sources said on Wednesday that the phone call was received late on Tuesday and the caller had threatened an attack on the detention centre if Pakistan’s military-led government bowed to the US demand.

And the massacre of 10 Shiite worshippers, just days after news of the murder of Daniel Pearl, shows how difficult President Pervez Musharraf’s task will be in ridding Pakistan of extremism, analysts said Wednesday. Despite the fall of the hardline Taliban regime in next-door Afghanistan and Musharraf’s January 12 address pledging to modernize the country, extremists did not vanish and still know how to hit Pakistan’s social and political fabric in the most sensitive spots.

Political analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi said the mosque attack, days after a grisly video surfaced showing Pearl’s killing, showed that Islamic militant groups have re-grouped since Musharraf’s speech.

The outfits "are trying to demonstrate to the government and the international community that they are fine and kicking and would challenge the Musharraf regime for pursuing policies to contain terrorism and extremist elements", Rizvi said.

In the attack Tuesday, suspected Sunni Muslim militants opened fire indiscriminately on Shiite worshippers at a mosque in a poor area of the northern city of Rawalpindi, killing 10 and wounding 15.

and from 2/27 MSNBC.com:

$5 million reward for Pearl killers

MSNBC NEWS SERVICES

The United States on Wednesday offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the apprehension of the killers of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was abducted in Pakistan in January.

THE U.S. STATE Department is posting the offer on its Rewards for Justice Web site and will advertise it in Pakistan, spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington during a briefing for reporters.

The United States has asked Pakistan to hand over Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who is in custody in Pakistan and who is suspected of organizing Pearl’s kidnapping and murder. Boucher said discussions aimed at satisfying Pakistani legal requirements for his transfer to the United States were continuing.

A high-ranking Pakistani diplomat said earlier Wednesday that his nation had “no objections” to handing Saeed over to U.S. authorities once certain legal issues are resolved.

The diplomat, who spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said Pakistan is considering whether to first try Saeed there before handing him over. He said Saeed could be transferred to American custody by classifying him as a combatant fighting against the U.S. war on terrorism, thus allowing the two countries to bypass the issue of extradition. The United States and Pakistan have no clear extradition treaty.

Saeed is among about a dozen suspects in the abduction and murder of the 38-year-old journalist, whose body has not been found. Pakistani authorities say they are still searching for four suspects they believe were key figures in the crime.

MUSHARRAF MEETS WITH WIDOW

Also on Wednesday, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf met with Pearl’s pregnant wife, Mariane, in Islamabad to console her, state television said.

It quoted Musharraf as telling her that his government would “spare no efforts” to trace her husband’s killers.

Pearl, the India-based South Asia bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped in Pakistan Jan. 23 while trying to contact Islamic radical groups in Karachi. Pakistani and U.S. officials last week received a videotape of his murder.

In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. broadcast on Tuesday, Mariane Pearl praised Pakistani law enforcement officials, saying they did an “amazing job” with limited resources. She also urged the investigators to continue their search for her husband’s killers.

The United States also has praised Pakistan for its efforts to hunt down the reporter’s abductors, but some media reports have said that Saeed may have been linked to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

Pakistani Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider took issue with those reports Wednesday, calling them “malicious and wrong propaganda.”

“We reject these reports completely. There is no question of any linkage,” Haider told The Associated Press on the sidelines of a conference on people smuggling in Bali, Indonesia.

In a meeting Tuesday Musharraf, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlin “thanked the president for the ongoing police cooperation in the Pearl case and encouraged further movement in the case,” said Mark Wentworth, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

WHITE HOUSE WANTS SUSPECT

The White House said it has made clear to Pakistan that it wants to try Saeed.

“The United States would very much like to get our hands on Omar Sheikh and the others who are responsible,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters in Washington.

However, Chamberlin and Musharraf agreed it was necessary to keep Saeed in Pakistan for the time being to facilitate efforts to recover Pearl’s body and the weapons used to kill him, a senior Pakistani Interior Ministry official said on condition of anonymity.

U.S. officials say they had requested Saeed’s extradition to the United States even before his name came up in connection with Pearl’s murder. The Justice Department secretly indicted him for the 1994 kidnapping of four Westerners in India, including an American.

On Tuesday, Saeed was taken to the city court building in the southern port city of Karachi where a witness in the Pearl case was asked to identify him, said Manzoor Mughal, a senior investigator. During the closed-door proceeding in a judge’s chamber, Saeed was not able to see the witness, whose identify has not been revealed, Mughal said.

Saeed arrived at the court in a convoy of about eight vehicles with dozens of policemen toting AK-47 assault rifles. It was not immediately known if the witness made a positive identification.

GRAND JURY CONSIDERED

Law-enforcement officials in the United States said the Justice Department was considering convening a grand jury in Washington, D.C., or in Alexandria, Va., to hear evidence and possibly bring an indictment.

Bush said he wanted to pursue extradition of Saeed under a 71-year-old treaty signed before the state of Pakistan was created.

“We’re always interested in dealing with people who have harmed American citizens,” he told reporters at the White House.

U.S. officials said they considered the treaty — which was signed with Britain in London in 1931, applied to India in 1942 and then to Pakistan after partition in 1947 — still in effect.

A senior White House official said the treaty had been used as recently as 2001 when, at Pakistan’s request, the United States extradited Mansur-ul-Haq, a former Pakistani naval chief wanted on corruption charges.

Pakistan handed over Ramzi Yousef, the convicted ringleader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Mir Amal Kasi, convicted of a shooting spree outside CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., without formal extradition proceedings, the official said.

Musharraf may face some pressure to try Saeed in Pakistan to show that the country’s judicial system can function and to fend off nationalist criticism about sending a Pakistani for trial in a foreign country. Many Pakistanis believe Pearl’s murder may have been revenge for Musharraf’s decision to side with the United States in the war in neighboring Afghanistan, reversing Pakistan’s long-standing support for that country’s now ousted Taliban regime.

Musharraf has pledged to rid Pakistan of Islamic extremism, but a decades-old alliance between Islamic militants and Pakistani intelligence agencies could hinder Musharraf’s plan.

HELD FOR 2 MORE WEEKS

A Pakistani judge on Monday gave prosecutors two more weeks to build their case against Saeed and two alleged accomplices implicated in the Pearl murder.

The accused had been expected to face murder and kidnapping charges at the closed hearing, but 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.

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.

The other two men who appeared alongside Saeed are accused of sending e-mails announcing Pearl’s kidnapping.

Saeed stunned a courtroom on Feb. 14 when he confessed to the kidnapping and announced that as far as he knew, Pearl was dead. But court officials say that would not be enough to convict because it was not made under oath.

The main target of a nationwide police manhunt is Amjad Faruqi, who police believe carried out the kidnapping. If police hope to recover Pearl’s body, one investigator said Monday, they must first find Faruqi.

Saeed, 28, a first-generation Briton, was arrested in India in 1994 in connection with the kidnapping of four Western backpackers, but was freed as part of a prisoner-hostage swap after gunmen hijacked an Indian Airlines jet to Kandahar, Afghanistan in 1999.

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 detonate explosives in his sneakers during a Paris-Miami flight.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Again - IMHO - the Pak ISI will never let Omar Saeed and cohorts be extradited to the U.S. or India, or Britain....they'll manufacture an escape or kill them first.......Jen

-- posted by JenL_2