Pearl's murder. This is electrifying stuff. B. Raman is usually right with his info.
saag.org
THE MAN WHO KNOWS & TALKS TOO MUCH
by B. Raman
On March 12, 2002 a court in Karachi extended the police
remand of Omar Shaikh, the British terrorist Of Pakistani origin,
who is believed to have masterminded the kidnapping of Daniel
Pearl, the US journalist. Pearl was subsequently reported to
have been brutally murdered and beheaded, most probably by
the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) headed by Qari Saifullah
Akhtar, which has always been close to the Pakistani
military-intelligence establishment and Gen.Pervez Musharraf.
As already repeatedly pointed out by this writer, the Pakistani
authorities have been trying hard to steer the investigation away
from the HUJI and to project it as the work of the
Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), one of the five terrorist organisations
banned by Musharraf on January 15, 2002. They are afraid that if
the HUJI's involvement became public knowledge there could be
US demands for banning it.
An interesting thing happened in the court on March 12. When
the Karachi Police moved the application for the extension of his
Police remand on the ground that his interrogation was
incomplete, Omar Shaikh reportedly remarked:" What do they
mean by saying the interrogation is incomplete? They stopped
interrogating me more than a fortnight ago. I am prepared to talk
to them, but they are afraid of my talking."
In fact, reports from independent and usually reliable sources in
the Karachi Police say that in the beginning of March, Musharraf
ordered the stopping of all interrogation of Omar Shaikh in
connection with his involvement in the kidnapping and murder of
Pearl and other terrorist incidents.
When the Karachi Police took custody of Omar from the
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) on February 12, he started talking
to them freely and voluntarily about his activities since he was
released by India in the last week of December, 1999 to
terminate the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar by
the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM). He said that:
* He had since then been functioning from Lahore with the
knowledge and permission of the ISI. At Lahore, he was
in regular touch with Gen.Mohammad Aziz Khan, who
was a Corps Commander there, till his appointment as
the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee on
October 8, 2001.
* He was frequently travelling to Kandahar to meet Mulla
Mohammad Omar, the Amir of the Taliban, and Osama
bin Laden and to Dubai.
* He had personally met Mohammad Atta, the
mastermind of the September 11 terrorist strikes on the
World Trade Centre in New York, during one of his visits
to Kandahar and knew of the plans for the September 11
strikes. He had told Lt.Gen. Ehsanul-Haq, the present
DG of the ISI, who was then a Corps Commander at
Peshawar, and Gen. Aziz Khan about it.
* He had personally accompanied Musharraf and Aziz to
the headquarters of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), at
Muridke, near Lahore, when they had gone there before
Musharraf's India visit in July last to appeal to the LET not
to oppose his visit to New Delhi.
* He had orchestrated the attacks on the Jammu &
Kashmir Legislative Assembly on October 1, 2001 and on
the Indian Parliament at New Delhi on December 13,
2001 and the firing incident outside the American Centre
in Kolkata on January 22, 2002. He knew Aftab Ansari,
the mafia leader, who is presently under interrogation in
India in connection with the Kolkata incident. All these
attacks were organised with the knowledge and approval
of the ISI.
* Pearl was kidnapped and murdered because he was
making enquiries about the links of the Pakistani
military-intelligence establishment with bin Laden and
wanted to meet people who would have knowledge of the
present whereabouts of bin Laden. They suspected that
Pearl was being used by the USA's Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) to recruit people who might be prepared to
betray bin Laden and help in his capture.
* More spectacular terrorist acts against the US were in
the offing.
Sindhi Officers of the Karachi Police, who had been extremely
resentful of the manner in which Musharraf, a Mohajir, had made
them work under the supervision of Army monitors much junior
to them in rank, leaked to the media what Omar Shaikh told them
about his involvement in the terrorist attacks in India.
Kamran Khan of the "News" of Islamabad reported about this in
his periodic column. This set off a wave of panic in the GHQ at
Rawalpindi and in the ISI headquarters, who tried to discredit
Kamran Khan's story by saying that Omar Shaikh had been
tutored to say all this about his involvement in the terrorist
attacks in India. Though they did not specify who had turored
him, the insinuation was that India had tutored him to discredit
Pakistan and Musharraf.
They then pressured the owner of "News" to sack the Editor of
the paper and three of his journalists, including Kamran Khan,
who had been publishing a lot of reports on the Pearl case which
cast doubts on Musharraf's sincerity.
Musharraf spoke to the father of Omar Shaikh and requested him
to persuade his son not to make such statements which harmed
Pakistan's supreme national interest. The father was allowed to
talk to his son over phone and, on his appeal, Omar Shaikh
agreed to retract his earlier statements and deny ever having
said these things.
In fact, in keeping with his promise to his father, he did retract,
but subsequently, he again started saying that he stood by
whatever he had stated earlier.
Musharraf then ordered the Karachi Police not to interrogate him
any longer and to treat him well. The military-intelligence
establishment is in a dilemma. It is determined not to extradite
him to the USA lest he repeat before the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) what he had told the Karachi Police. At the
same time, they don't want to try him in Pakistan either.
Amongst the various options reportedly being considered are to
have him declared as insane and unfit for trial and extradition or,
if need be, to eliminate him and show him as having been killed
when an attempt was made to free him by the Sipah-e-Sahaba
Pakistan, the banned Sunni extremist organisation, which has
recently stepped up its anti-Shia activities in Karachi.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India,
and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail:
corde@vsnl.com ) |
