India - Pakistan Crisis

Top 66. Jan 26, 2002 11:25 AM

» Steven_Russell - Re: Re: India's Top 20 Terrorist list?

In response to message posted by JenL_2:

Jen, thanks for the complete list. I made all the changes to match. There were a few errors in the original reporting:

There are only four on the list of the December 1999 hijackers of the Air India flight - originally it was reported as five on the wanted list, I think because #20, Gajinder Singh, was a hijacker of a 1981 flight. But there were indeed five hijackers reported in the January 3 2000 news story on the event you linked on the Terrorist thread, so one of the five hijackers is unaccounted for.

Also, the list seems to actually have 21 names, including Amanullah Khan, who was named as one of the 20 in another report, which he then responded to, saying he would give himself up if an international court issued a verdict against him - but he is not on this list of 20 - strange.

-- posted by Steven_Russell

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/artic...

Top 67. Jan 26, 2002 11:28 AM

» Steven_Russell - US WSJ reporter disapears in Baluchistan, Pak

US reporter missing in Pak

REUTERS [ SATURDAY, JANUARY 26, 2002 2:16:19 AM ]
KARACHI: An American reporter for the Wall Street Journal has gone missing in Pakistan, apparently while investigating Islamic militant groups linked to Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda, Pakistani officials said on Friday.

The business newspaper's publisher, Dow Jones & Co, said in a statement that the reporter, Daniel Pearl, was working on a story and did not check in with his bureau on Wednesday evening.

A senior official in the Sindh provincial government said police had mounted a search for Pearl in Karachi and in neigbouring Baluchistan province.

"The initial inquiry suggests he was attempting to interview some people who could provide him with a lead to a terrorist organisation," said the official, who declined to be identified.
The official said Pearl was apparently investigating Islamic militant groups, possibly including some with links to Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

-- posted by Steven_Russell

Top 68. Jan 27, 2002 1:24 AM

» JenL_2 - Re: US WSJ reporter disapears in Baluchistan, Pak

In response to message posted by Steven_Russell:

Oh oh - doesn't sound good does it!?!

Just got through talking to a young Pakistani Muslim guy that I met in Yahoo Singapore chat. He lives in Peshwar and Islamabad - is a college student in computer tech and works as a computer engineer for the local newspaper. Claims to be a moderate Muslim, and is totally against extremism and terrorism.... but also said that he believes in the concept of jihad. I asked him what he meant by jihad ....he said his english wasn't good enough to explain in chat, but will explain later in an email. His opinion on the Kashmir crisis is that the India military is as much at fault as the Islamic militants. His father is a teacher of English and Urdu in the local school, and his younger sister is in 1st year pre-med. He was connecting to the internet from a home computer with high-speed connection. He said that all their internet connections in Pakistan are high-speed. Will be talking with him again....Interesting...never know who you're going to meet in Yahoo chat!.......Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

Religious Radicals Facing Backlash in Pakistan

Top 69. Jan 29, 2002 8:14 AM

» JenL_2 - Pak Backlash Against Radicals

Interesting article from 1/28 WashingtonPost.com with pics from Yahoo:

Families Bitter Over Fate of Recruits to Taliban Cause; Young Men Were 'Betrayed by the Mullahs'

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service

CHAKDARA, Pakistan -- The trucks rumbled through this dusty town in late October with a harvest of men reaped from the fervor of the countryside. Others rushed from shops and fields to clamber aboard, eager to trade the poverty of their lives for the honor of being a hero -- or martyr -- in Afghanistan's holy war.

Some say 5,000 joined the caravan; others say twice that. Wives and fathers sent them willingly. Ata Ur Rahman, 28, was among them.

Three months later, Rahman is languishing in a squalid jail in Afghanistan while his family laments its enthusiasm. "He was betrayed by the mullahs who took him," spat his younger brother, Sayed Ur Rahman.

Their anger reflects a widespread disillusionment with religious leaders who rallied Pakistanis to the side of the Taliban, and a souring of the Islamic militancy that had produced volunteers for the cause and threatened to undermine the Pakistani government's support for the United States.

Interviews with people in villages and cities, and with analysts, officials, mullahs and journalists indicate that the Taliban's lopsided defeat in Afghanistan and the abandonment of its Pakistani followers -- scores of whom were rounded up following the Taliban's collapse -- have dealt a blow to religious radicals here, who have lost much of their public support.

"The Taliban lost their credibility when they didn't stand and die for their cause. They just fled and left the foreigners there to die. People here who lost youngsters in Afghanistan feel misled," said Shireen Mazari, head of the Institute of Strategic Studies, a think tank in the capital, Islamabad.

"There is a lot of anger. The people who went just were sent in chaos," agreed Ahmad Shah, the imam, or religious leader, of a tiny farming village in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province.

Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has seized on this shift in mood to crack down on Muslim radicalism in his country, a move that observers here say would have been much more difficult a few months ago. His campaign still faces troublesome opposition from a strong minority of strident mullahs and their followers.

Some here argue that radical Islam never had a large following in Pakistan, as shown by the low turnouts at anti-government demonstrations in October. They say the influence of mullahs has been exaggerated by 25 years of government policy that gave religious figures disproportionate power.

But they agree that a decade-long souring of relations with the United States and the lure of a bold Islamic cause in Afghanistan produced a sympathetic swell of support here for the Taliban. And the mosques' call to jihad, or holy war, was a clarion for volunteers from the poor countryside and tribal areas of Pakistan.

"In the early days of the war, there was a tremendous movement to Islam. The liberals were looking for caves to hide in," chortled Hamid Gul, a conservative former Pakistani intelligence chief who had directed clandestine support to the Taliban to help bring it to power in the 1990s.

But the enthusiasm for the movement waned when the Taliban and its Pakistani supporters were defeated, he acknowledged in an interview.

"It became clear that the Americans were so ruthless, they would spare nothing" in their bombardment, he said. "The movement that was picking up in the world suddenly collapsed."

That movement was most visible here in the recruitment caravans organized by Sufi Mohammad, a religious party leader who drew much of his support from hardscrabble villages tucked in creases of the mountains rising in northern Pakistan beyond this town.

The government tried -- halfheartedly, complained the Americans -- to stop Sufi Mohammad's trucks full of fired-up volunteers from crossing into Afghanistan in the early weeks of the war. But thousands breached the porous border with him. A smaller number of volunteers -- no one knows how much smaller -- have limped back into Pakistan, leaving behind the dead and captured.

Sufi Mohammad was arrested at the border. The government says he will be charged with entering Afghanistan illegally; others say he sought arrest to avoid being lynched by angry families of his former followers.

"Sufi Mohammad let down the people," said Khisda Rahman, 35, in Chakdara. "He took all these guys and now they are dead or in prison. But he ran away and came back. People are asking why he didn't sacrifice himself."

When Sufi Mohammad organized the convoys that passed through Chakdara, "the whole town was celebrating," Rahman said. "Now they are sad they did. They will never follow him again."

In Gulibagh, a tiny village of 80 mud houses surrounded by vegetable and wheat fields, the father of Abdul Saleem, 23, said he learned of the death of his son from a newspaper. After sneaking away from home to join the jihad, the young man was killed by a missile strike on a bus full of volunteers.

Abdul Saleem's identity card shows a baby-faced man with a fringe of a beard. A few weeks after he left home, his parents got a letter from him: "I have completed my training and I am now going to the front line," he said. On the folded, lined school paper, he had written: "We will be buried in the mountains and ice will be my dress."

"We didn't know he went," said his father, Ziarat Gul, 60, a man with a creased face and rough hands from a life of prodding the earth for succor. "We are religious people and we think he has gone for a good cause. But if you ask me my feelings on the death of a son -- if you are a father, you can imagine. There are no words."

"It wasn't a proper jihad. It was a mess," scoffed Qari Saqib Shah, a teacher at a nearby religious school. Shah's 21-year-old nephew was killed -- not gloriously in battle, but riding with other volunteers in a bus that was struck by a missile near Mazar-e Sharif, he said. "People went to Afghanistan with no proper training, no strategy, no supplies, no food, not even proper accommodations."

But there still is a "seething discontent, an anger at America" in Pakistan, said Khurshid Ahmad, a leader of the Jamiat-i-Islami religious party.

This claim is key to understanding the appeal of the Taliban cause for a broader spectrum of Pakistanis, even those who would not volunteer to fight or even embrace the austere brand of Islam practiced by the Taliban, argues Najam Sethi, editor of Friday Times, a weekly paper based in Lahore.

"The people are not terribly pro-Taliban, but they are anti-American," he said. "People feel Americans abandoned Pakistan, and we became the most sanctioned country in the world. So they hoped the Americans would find themselves in another Vietnam," and cheered the Taliban.

With the Taliban defeated, that attitude has been replaced by "a heavy dose of realism," he said. "The people quickly retreated into their cynical sense, saying, 'Oh yes, America is a superpower and it was foolish to go up against the superpower.' "

The success of Musharraf's crackdown on radical mosques and religious schools, say observers here, will depend on the ebb and flow of anti-Americanism, religious fervor, moderation and realism.

"Somebody had to teach the United States a lesson," said Abdul Aziz, the mullah of a mosque in the center of Islamabad who said he still preaches in support of the Taliban. "America is the main terrorist. They look down on everyone else."

But an imam at a mosque not far away brushes aside a question about continued support for the movement in Afghanistan.

"That issue should be forgotten," said Qazi Zain Ul Abideen. "The Taliban government is dead and buried. Islam says we should not speak ill of the dead."

Musharraf insists he is tapping the majority vein of moderation in Pakistan by pursuing his crackdown.

"Whatever extremists are here are a very small minority," agreed Khalid Ulmar, an army officer-turned-historian. "All religions have their extremists, but this is not an extremist country. I can listen to Jennifer Lopez and still be a Muslim."

Mazari, the head of the think tank, said Musharraf cleverly resisted ordering a heavy-handed clampdown on the October demonstrations called by religious groups opposed to his decision to support the U.S. war campaign.

"Musharraf allowed the demonstrations to go ahead, and the low turnout showed the people didn't support" the extremists, she said. "The numbers in the demonstrations just went down and down, and then petered out."

Many here said Musharraf correctly judged that Pakistanis were weary of both the international complications brought to Pakistan by radical Islam and the deadly gunplay that has often accompanied disputes between radical factions in the country.

"Musharraf is right that people were sick of all this violence," Sethi said. "They are sick and tired of being portrayed in the Western media as a 'goner' country, with all the negative images of a radical, fundamentalist country."

"People say, yes, well look what happened to Afghanistan," he said. "We don't want that."

<img src="http://us.news2.yimg.com/story.news.yaho..." width=450 height=342>
Protestors belonging to the Pakistan Defense Council hold a sign symbolizing the U.S.-led attacks in Afghanistan as a "Clash of Civilization" during a rally held in Peshawar, Pakistan Sunday, Jan 27, 2002. (AP Photo/Shabbir Hussain Imam)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=st...

<img src="http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/a..." width=450 height=312>
Supporters of Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf hold a placard saying "Musharraf, we are with you" during a rally to support his decisions to impose a ban on militant groups, Tuesday, Jan 22, 2002 in Karachi, Pakistan. (AP Photo/Zia Mazhar)
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/ap/200201...

What bothers me is that it's not so much that Pakistanis like the U.S., but that they feel betrayed by the Taliban.....and it's not so much that they think our cause is just.....but like bin Laden said.... "everyone likes the strong horse". I wish good luck to Gen Musharraf in turning his country around......Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

Pakistan derides Calcutta attack claim

Top 70. Jan 30, 2002 8:04 PM

» JenL_2 - 1/22 Calcutta Terrorist Attack

I don't think that anyone has posted about the 1/22 terrorist attack on the U.S. Information Center in Calcutta that left 4 Indian Police dead & more than 20 wounded....Here's an update from 1/29 BBC News:

Pakistan has dismissed Indian claims linking two Pakistani men to the recent attack on an American cultural centre in Calcutta.

Indian police said the two men were killed in a gun battle in the northern state of Jharkhand on Monday, but that one of them had confessed to the Calcutta attack shortly before he died.

But a Pakistani Government spokesman dismissed the claim as "ridiculous" and said India should stop blaming Pakistan for its own internal problems.

Spokesman Syed Anwar Mahmood said: "Rather than to continue blaming... Pakistan for all acts of terrorism, it is about time that the Indian leadership should look inwards for answers and clues within."

'Separatists'

Jharkhand's state police intelligence chief, RR Prasad, had said that both the dead men were members of the Kashmiri separatist group Laskhar-e-Toiba, which is blamed by India for a role in the suicide attack on its parliament in December.

Indian police said one man had died at the scene and the other later in hospital.

Mr Prasad connected the two to the attack on the American centre in Calcutta on 22 January, in which four policemen were killed by gunmen on motorcycles.

He said that train tickets had been found on their bodies, showing they had travelled from Calcutta to Hazaribagh after the attack, our correspondent Subir Bhaumik reports.

They were staying at a house rented by a Laskhar-e-Toiba sympathiser, named as Abdul Majeed, and had been in contact with the group through an internet café in the town.

House siege

A large police contingent had encircled the house in the Khirgaon area of Hazaribagh, telling those inside to surrender.

But police said that shots were fired from the house and a 40-minute gun battle ensued.

Mr Prasad named the two Pakistanis as Mohammed Idris al-Zahid and Mohammed Salim, but it was not clear whether there were other people in the house who had escaped.

An intelligence bureau official in Calcutta told the BBC that the two suspects were from Multan in Pakistan.

Indian Home Secretary Kamal Pande said that an AK-47 rifle, believed to have been used in the Calcutta attack, had been recovered from the house.

He said that a "new trend" was emerging, featuring the "direct involvement of Pakistani nationals in terrorist, espionage and subversive activities in India".

Video evidence

After the attack on the American centre, an international arrest warrant was issued for an Indian national, Farhan Malik.

Indian intelligence said it had linked him to two groups, both of which said they carried out the attack.

Last Thursday, Calcutta police released video footage showing the face of at least one of the gunmen.

The attack led West Bengal authorities to increase security on the border with Bangladesh.

The Laskhar-e-Toiba group was banned by Pakistan following the attack on the Indian parliament, which brought the two states close to war.

Our correspondent says that the alleged death-bed confession by one of the suspects on Monday may further strain relations between India and Pakistan at a time when they were showing some signs of improving.

from 1/22 MSNBC.com:

The Calcutta connection to terrorism

.....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

Key suspect in WSJ reporter’s kidnapping surrenders

Top 71. Jan 31, 2002 1:05 AM

» JenL_2 - Re: US WSJ reporter disapears in Baluchistan, Pak

In response to message posted by Steven_Russell:

Update from 1/31 India Express:

Press Trust of India

Islamabad, January 31: A key suspect in the kidnapping of American journalist Daniel Pearl has surrendered to police pleading to be innocent but at the same time admitting a role in recruiting and training militants to fight in Kashmir and other places.

As the media here and the Wall Street Journal for which Pearl worked for, received fresh e-mail messages on Thursday from his captors giving a 24-hour deadline to kill him, a local Al-Qaida activist from Rawalpindi, considered a prime suspect in the case, surrendered to police Wednesday night.

Pakistan daily The News reported on Thursday that the police, failed to get anything substantial from the surrendered suspect, Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilnai, the leader of defunct Jamiat al Fuqra.

Gilani claimed that he had nothing to do with Pearl's abduction.

Gilani, who was found absconding, was believed to be the last man the US journalist reportedly met before he went missing few days ago. This raised suspicion that he was connected with the kidnapping.

After surrendering to police in Rawalpindi, Gilani was taken to Karachi where he was interrogated by the Pakistan police and American FBI agents.

His extradition to the US was ruled out, the newspaper said.

....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

http://www.suite101.com/discussion.cfm/i...

Top 72. Feb 6, 2002 8:08 PM

» JenL_2 - Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh - WSJ Reporter Kidnapping

More on the Daniel Pearl Kidnapping case

Tonight's NBC news reported that Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh may be responsible for the kidnapping of WSJ reporter Daniel Pearl. Here's the story from 2/6 MSNBC.com:

<img src="http://a799.ms.akamai.net/3/799/388/e576..." width=250 height=190 align="left">Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British-born Islamic Militant, is the key suspect in the kidnapping of U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl. NBC's Dawna Friesen reports from Karachi, Pakistan.

Pakistan names suspect in kidnap case

Militant British-born Muslim was released in hijacking deal 3 years ago

MSNBC STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

KARACHI, Pakistan, Feb. 6 — Pakistani investigators believe they are very close to solving the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and have identified a key suspect in the case as British Islamic militant Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh. Meanwhile, Pearl’s wife issued a new appeal for his release. “This is an innocent man, with an innocent wife and an unborn son,” she said.

THE 27-YEAR-OLD Saeed, a first-generation Briton also known as Sheik Omar Saeed or Sheik Omar, is believed by police to have provided pictures of Pearl in captivity. They were sent to news organizations five days after the 38-year-old reporter disappeared in Karachi.

Police said three people had been arrested in Karachi for sending the e-mails, and one of them claimed he received the pictures from Saeed. Police also raided houses in the eastern city of Lahore and detained some of Saeed’s relatives — a common police tactic here to pressure criminal suspects to surrender.

Saeed is one of three men freed by India on Dec. 31, 1999, to end the hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight to Kandahar in Afghanistan. He had been jailed for five years in India for allegedly kidnapping British and American tourists in 1994.

POSSIBLE LINK TO BIN LADEN

Investigators say Saeed, the son of wealthy Pakistani parents, may be the most important British link to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network. He is a close associate of Maulana Azhar Masood, one of India’s most-wanted men. Masood founded the militant Jaish-e-Mohammad — Army of Mohammad — a group seeking an end to Indian rule in the disputed Kashmir region.

“There is a connection to Jaish in Pearl’s kidnapping. This lead we got from the two persons detained last night in Karachi,” a senior police official told Reuters.

Masood, who has visited bin Laden in Afghanistan, was detained by Pakistan in late December and his group was banned a month later.

‘A NICE BLOKE’

Saeed, the son of a Pakistani-born clothing merchant who lives in a London suburb, attended expensive private schools where classmates and teachers regarded him as a devoted student.

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.

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 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.”

PAKISTAN EAGER TO WRAP UP CASE

Pakistani authorities would like to end the kidnap ordeal before President Pervez Musharraf visits the United States next week.

“We know who has Daniel and we are very close,” Mukhtar Ahmed Sheikh, who is in charge of police here in Sindh province, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “We might conclude the whole thing very soon, sooner than you think.”

Pearl was last seen heading for an appointment with someone he thought could arrange an interview with Sheik Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani, leader of a small Muslim group.

Gilani has been detained but denies any knowledge of the kidnapping.

The suspects arrested by Pakistani police told investigators that the last time they saw the U.S. reporter he was alive, although there was no information on when that was, NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski reported.

U.S. PRAISE

In Islamabad, U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Kenneth Dam offered praise for the investigators. “I’m very impressed with what Pakistan is doing. The importance of this matter to the U.S. simply can’t be overstated,” he said.

“They’re on top of the situation. It’s a vigorous investigation, and I’m quite satisfied,” Dam told journalists a day after he met with Musharraf.

Dam gave no details. Pakistan authorities say the investigation has expanded from the southern city of Karachi, where Pearl disappeared Jan. 23, to include the entire country.

Troops on the border with Afghanistan have been ordered to guard against any attempt by Pearl’s captors to move him across the border, a senior Interior Ministry official said Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The “chances of such a move are very small,” the official acknowledged. He added: “We are tightening the noose on the kidnappers and we are still optimistic that Pearl is alive.”

The last e-mail message that police consider genuine was sent Jan. 30. It included a photo of Pearl and threatened to kill him within 24 hours.

APPEALS TO CAPTORS

Mariane Pearl, pregnant with the couple’s first child, wrote in Pakistan’s The Nation newspaper that her husband’s captors “are preventing a man from writing about their concerns and accomplishing his chief work: to create a bridge between cultures.”

“My husband can’t change foreign policy, but he can give voice to people — he can express the views of the people who hold him to the world,” she wrote in an appeal published Wednesday.

Wednesday was the seventh straight day without a message from Pearl’s captors. The Wall Street Journal, Pearl’s employer, appealed to the kidnappers to resume contact and clear up confusion caused by hoax e-mails sent in recent days from people claiming to hold the reporter.

In an open letter released late Monday, the Journal’s managing editor, Paul Steiger, urged Pearl’s captors to resume contact.

Steiger’s letter was addressed to the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, a previously unknown group which first claimed in a Jan. 27 e-mail to be holding Pearl. The e-mail included photographs of Pearl — one with a gun to his head — and demands that Washington return Pakistani prisoners held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for trial in Pakistan. The Bush administration has ruled out any negotiations.

“I have not heard from you for several days and want to begin a dialogue that will address your concerns and bring about Danny’s safe release,” Steiger’s letter said.

“Since your last e-mail I have received numerous e-mails from people who claim that they are holding Danny. Because of these claims, it has become difficult for me to know that I am communicating with the people holding Danny.”

He suggested the kidnappers use the e-mail account or private telephone number of one of two Pearl friends, both best men at his wedding.

“This line of communication would show me that Danny is with you and would allow us one-to-one contact. We are eager to hear from you soon,” Steiger concluded.

Pearl’s abduction threatens to cloud Musharraf’s visit to the United States. A key ally in the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, the Pakistani leader also won praise from Washington for cracking down on Pakistan-based Islamic militants accused of terrorism against nuclear rival India.

ZAEEF FAMILY REACTION

In their Jan. 27 e-mail, Pearl’s captors also called for the release of Afghanistan’s former ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, who was the Taliban’s most-recognized spokesman. The bearded, black-turbaned ambassador was arrested in Pakistan and turned over to the United States.

A close relative of Zaeef’s on Tuesday condemned Pearl’s abduction.

“Islam does not allow kidnapping of innocent people,” said the family member, who did not want to be identified. “We condemn this act and ask those who have kidnapped Mr. Pearl not to use the name of Zaeef.”

Pearl, the Journal’s South Asian bureau chief, was working on a story about Islamic fundamentalists. He disappeared in Karachi, the crime-ridden capital of southern Sindh province, after going to meet a contact at a restaurant.

In addition to Saeed, police say they have been looking for two other suspects, Mohammed Hashim and Bashir Ahmad Shabbir. Hashim, also known as Arif, is believed to be an activist in the militant group known as Harkat ul-Mujahedeen, and Shabbir was a follower of Gilani, police said. Pearl had contacted both suspects before his abduction.

NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski in Washington, NBC’s David Rudge in London, MSNBC’s Dawna Friesen in Islamabad, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

<img src="http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/585000/ima..." width=150 height=180 align="left">Ahmad Omar Sayyed Sheikh

We've already been tracking Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh on several threads - starting with the first post on this thread:

And then these posts on the "Terrorist Attack" thread:

http://www.suite101.com/discussion.cfm/i...

Yup - from this guy's history - he's the logical suspect in the Daniel Pearl kidnapping - why didn't we think of that!.....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/ne...

Top 73. Feb 6, 2002 9:02 PM

» JenL_2 - Ahmad Omar Sayyed Sheikh kidnapped Pearl

more on Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh & the WSJ reporter kidnapping copied from the "America at War" thread:

Author: Steven_Russell
Date: February 6, 2002 7:59 PM
Subject: Ahmad Omar Sayyed Sheikh kidnapped Pearl

Ahmad Omar Sayyed Sheikh -------------- at large in Pakistan as of January 23, 2002; released from Dehli prison in December 1999 Air India hostage crisis; was in Dehli prison since 1994

A Briton from Snaresbrook, east London, a British student of Pakistani origin, he lived with his father in Wanstead. Ahmad Omar Sheikh was released from prison in the December 1999 India Air hostage crisis along with Maulana Azhar and one other.

Mr Sheikh had been held in Delhi since 1994 on charges of kidnapping three Britons, Rhys Partridge, Paul Rideout and Miles Croston. He was accused of doing so for Harkat-Ul-Ansar (HUA), a Pakistan-based Islamic fundamentalist organisation thought by India to be behind the kidnapping and murder of five Western tourists in Kashmir in 1995.

Ahmad Omar Sayyed Sheikh was one of three men released from Indian prison on New Year's Eve 1999 as part of a deal by the Indian government to end the eight-day hostage ordeal, which was linked to the dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir. They left from the plane in southern Afghanistan with the five hijackers. India said they had fled to Pakistan, but Pakistan denied they had crossed the border.

A group which kidnapped a Calcutta businessman before fall 2001 was able to extract ransom from him. The ransom was paid in August 2001 and according to Indian investigators a large portion of that money, $100,000 (£70,000), went on to Mr Sheikh. Mr Sheikh is said to have wired the money to the ringleader of the World Trade Centre terrorists, Mohamed Atta, in advance of the 11 September attacks, from his base in the Pakistani cantonment city of Rawalpindi. The circumstantial evidence suggests that he is now a linchpin of the organisation.

The drive-by shooting that killed five policemen and left 20 people wounded outside the American Centre in Calcutta on Tuesday January 22, 2002 has been linked by a senior Indian government minister to the Briton, Ahmad Omar Sheikh.

Ex-public school boy 'kidnapped reporter'

by Keith Poole

A former English public school boy was today being hunted as the suspected mastermind behind the kidnap of US journalist Daniel Pearl.

(06 Feb 2002)

Pakistani government sources said they were closing in on 27-year-old Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was born in east London. Police believe he was behind emails threatening Mr Pearl's life, who was last seen on 23 January.

FBI agents also believe the former London School of Economics student has links with al Qaeda and could have helped back some of the 11 September hijackers financially.

The revelations followed the arrest of three of Sheikh's friends and relatives yesterday in Karachi. They were identified only as Suleiman, Fawad and Adeel.

Mukhtar Ahmed Sheikh, in charge of police in Sindh province, said: "The fact is we know who has done it and we are very close to resolving the case. But there are questions which, if I answer, could affect the case. It is enough to say that we might conclude the whole thing very soon."

He added that Mr Pearl was still believed to be alive.

A group calling itself the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty has claimed to have kidnapped Mr Pearl. However, investigators suspect the outlawed Islamic extremist Harkat ul- Mujahedeen (Movement of Holy War) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (Army of Muhammad).

The possible involvement of Saeed Sheikh points to the two militant groups. Sheikh was freed by India on 31 December 1999 to end a hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight to Kandahar, Afghanistan. He was freed along with Maulana Masood Azhar, a former Harkat ul-Mujahedeen activist who later formed Jaish-e-Mohammed. Azhar is in police custody.

In 1994, Sheikh was shot and imprisoned in India for allegedly being part of a group that abducted British tourists in protest over Indian rule in Kashmir.

Emails sent last week are believed to be the only genuine communication received from the kidnappers. One included photographs of Mr Pearl - one with a gun to his head - in protest at the treatment of Pakistani prisoners held by the US at Camp X-Ray, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The police believe the idiomatic excellence of the English in the emails suggests the involvement of a native English speaker.

Sheikh is the son of wealthy Pakistani parents from Wanstead, who moved to the UK in the Sixties. Their son went to the private Forest School, in Snaresbrook, where England cricket captain Nasser Hussain was a contemporary. He passed four A-levels, two at grade A and two at grade B, and was head of his school house. He went on to study economics and statistics at LSE while his sister went on to Oxford University.

At the time of the tourists' kidnapping in 1994, his father, who ran a textile business, said his son had become "deeply affected" by what had been happening to Muslims in Kashmir and Bosnia.

-- posted by JenL_2

Top 74. Feb 6, 2002 9:12 PM

» Steven_Russell - Re: Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh - WSJ Reporter Kidnapping

In response to message posted by JenL_2:

He is a really bad guy, involved with funding Muhammad Atta in the 9/11 attack. Note the timing of the events mentioned below, merely a day apart:

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Lal Krishna Advani, India's Home Minister, linked Mr Sheikh's group on January 23, 2002 to the Calcutta drive-by shooting on Tuesday January 22, 2002. He said that a caller from Dubai had telephoned police in Calcutta to claim responsibility for the attack. Information so far "indicates that a group which kidnapped a Calcutta businessman some time back and was able to extract ransom from him" was behind the shooting, the minister said. The ransom he was referring to was paid last August 2001 to the man who called the police in Calcutta on Tuesday January 22, 2002, and according to Indian investigators a large portion of that money, $100,000 (£70,000), went on to Mr Sheikh.

Police believe he was behind emails threatening the kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl's life, who was last seen on 23 January 2002.

-- posted by Steven_Russell