Pakistani police Wednesday arrested an Islamic extremist who was sentenced to death for a 2002 suicide car bomb blast outside Karachi's Sheraton Hotel which killed 11 French engineers, an official said.
Police said they suspect Mohammad Sohail also filmed the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was abducted in the volatile southern city in early 2002.
Sohail, a member of the Harkat Jihad-e-Islami militant group, was detained after falling off a motorbike during a shoot-out with police in Karachi, city police officer Mohammad Fayyaz told.
He was one of three Sunni Muslim militants sentenced by an anti-terrorism court in June 2003 for the blast outside the hotel, which killed 11 French engineers and three Pakistanis. He was convicted in absentia.
"He was arrested after he fell down from a motorcycle, while five other terrorists escaped after firing at police," Fayyaz said.
Fayyaz said during an initial interrogation Sohail had confessed to a role in the death of Pearl and a December 2003 suicide attack on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
"He could be the cameraman who made the video of Pearl's slaying and we are interrogating him," the officer added.
The capture may turn out to be a major breakthrough in the Pearl case, he said, but refused to give more information.
"We have just arrested him and it's premature to give such details, which could affect the probe," Fayyaz said, adding that police were conducting raids to hunt down Sohail's five accomplices who escaped.
Sohail has also told police that in the Musharraf case his role was to survey the site of the bomb attack in the northern city of Rawalpindi where the president's motorcade was targeted, Fayyaz said.
The militant was also a close associate of Al-Qaeda kingpin Amjad Farooqi, who was killed by police last year after having been indicted in Pearl's abduction and murder, the police officer added. |
