Pearl Killer killed in Pakistan shootout

[Dr. Tom 0]

Pakistan Says Pearl Killer Dies in Shootout

 

Monday, September 27, 2004

 

KARACHI, Pakistan — Police stepped up patrols around foreign consulates and government offices in this volatile city on Monday, fearing a backlash after Pakistani forces killed a suspected top Al Qaeda operative wanted for his alleged role in the 2002 kidnapping and beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl (search).

 

Amjad Hussain Farooqi, also accused in two attempts on the life of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf (search) in December 2003, died in a four-hour shootout Sunday at a house in the southern town of Nawabshah. Two or three other men, one of them an Islamic cleric, were arrested. Like Farooqi, they are all Pakistanis.

 

Authorities hailed the operation as a breakthrough and on Monday the investigation expanded to include the arrest of three other suspected Islamic militants, all brothers, in Sukkur, a town not far from Nawabshah. One was identified as Khalid Ansari, alleged to have ties to the Sunni Muslim group Jaish-e-Mohammed (search).

 

Police said the men were blindfolded and led away by intelligence officials as security forces using loudspeakers warned residents to stay indoors.

 

Fayyaz Leghari, deputy chief of police in Karachi, a hotbed for Islamic militants, said the city was on "red alert." As well as stepping up patrols around foreign consulates and key government offices, police posted more plainclothes officers at sensitive locations.

 

Pakistan is a key U.S. ally in the war against terrorism and has arrested more than 600 Al Qaeda suspects, including several senior figures in the terror network. Many have been handed over to U.S. authorities.

 

In Washington, a U.S. official who described Farooqi as a key Al Qaeda figure said the government could not yet confirm he had been killed but that appeared to be the case. Pakistani officials said they were awaiting the results of DNA tests but had little doubt the body was that of Farooqi.

 

Farooqi was believed to have been an associate of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (search), the reputed Al Qaeda No. 3 captured in Pakistan last year. He had been missing since Pearl was abducted in Karachi in January 2002.

 

Pearl's captors beheaded the journalist and released a videotape of the killing. Four Islamic militants have been convicted of his kidnapping but seven other suspects — including those who allegedly slit his throat — remain at large.

 

Farooqi, thought to be 32, was born in a village in eastern Punjab province. His family says he was radicalized by a visit to Kashmir (search), where he trained with Islamic militants fighting against Indian security forces. He later visited Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

 

In May, security officials identified him as an organizer, with Libyan Al Qaeda suspect Abu Faraj al-Libbi, of two attempts to assassinate Musharraf last December by blowing up his motorcade in Rawalpindi, a city near the capital, Islamabad. Musharraf, who has enraged Islamic militants with his support for Washington's campaign against terrorism, escaped injury both times but several other people were killed. Al-Libbi remains at large.

 

Farooqi is also suspected of taking part in the hijacking of an Indian airliner to Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 1999 that resulted in a hostages-for-prisoners exchange that freed British-born militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh from an Indian prison. Sheikh has been sentenced to death for his role in setting up the Pearl abduction.

 

Dozens of police and paramilitary rangers blocked access Monday to the scene of Sunday's four-hour raid in Nawabshah, 125 miles northeast of the main southern city of Karachi. Authorities said they acted on a tip that Farooqi was hiding there. A paramilitary official said that at one point Farooqi shouted he preferred death to capture.

 

Officials have yet to disclose the identities of those arrested. But an intelligence official in Nawabshah, 125 miles northeast of Karachi, said one was Abdul Rehman, a teacher at a local Islamic seminary who had rented the house for Farooqi two months ago.

 

Another intelligence official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said a second suspect as Yaqoob Farooqi. It was unclear if he was related to the dead suspect.

 

Authorities seized a computer, CDs, militant literature, some grenades, a wire cutter and several photos from the house, the source said.

 

One neighbor, Zainul Abideen, recounted seeing Farooqi.

 

"He is the same man whose pictures we saw today in the newspapers. I have seen him going and coming on his bicycle," he said.

 

Pakistan says it has arrested at least 70 terror suspects since mid-July, including Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan (search), an alleged Al Qaeda computer expert, and Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani (search), a Tanzanian suspect in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in east Africa that killed more than 200 people.

 

(OMGFAUXNEWSLOL2004~!!!!11)

[Guest MikeSC]

Should've beheaded him.

-=Mike

[Guest Cerebus]

"Score one for the good guys"? Hardly.

 

The death of Daniel Pearl was not a random act and Pearl was not a random victim (unlike the beheadings in Iraq). To understand the beheading of Daniel Pearl you have to understand the complex web of backstabs, dirty tricks, Islamic extremists, juntas, corrupt politicians, and ethnic fighting in Pakistan. Hell, Machiavelli's Italy was a shining example of intrastate cooperation compared to Pakistan in the last 20 years.

 

Basically, in Pakistan, the ISI intelligence service weilds dangerous power and virtually controlls the two main terrorist groups in Kasmir, Lashkar e Tobia (LeT) and the Jaeesh e Mohammed (JeM). General Musharraf, the leader of Pakistan, has, himself, been the target of two ISI backed assassination attempts. In addition, ISI's puppets virtually control the critical western border of Pakistan (i.e. the one that borders Afghanistan), though to be fair that's starting to change, albeit slowly. The problem is that there are more than a few members of Musharraf's government that are still actively supporting ISI operations in Kashmir as well as the western border, something that would be VERY dangerous to Mushrraf's now close relationship with the United States.

 

So what does this have to do with Pearl? There is a lot of evidence that Pearl had started his journey with the intent of investigating Richard Reid's mentors but ended up pursuing a story on Dawood Ibrahim, a Pakistani mob-man with long standing ties to terrorist groups in Pakistan and India, as well as a supporter of clandestine ISI operations (including bombings in Mumbai). He's been hiding out in Karachi but the Pakistani government has refused both Indian and Interpol requests that he be arrested/extridited claiming that Ibrahim is not in Pakistan at all. Ibrahim has kept himself busy by becoming "don" of Kirachi doing everything from the regular ol shakedowns and drug smuggling to fixing cricket matches. More importantly, he became a major ISI controller, rooting out RAW (Indian intelliegence) agents, supported several of ISI's pet terrorists, assisted in covert loans to purchace banned nuclear technology from North Korea and China, and even bailed out the Pakistan Central Bank. All in all, Ibrahim is a critical and clandestine component of the ISI and the Pakistani government. To have a newspaper reporter from a world wide known newspaper like the WSJ doing an indepth report on this man could be a huge embarassment to Musharraf and be very dangerous to the ISI. This is where this clown Farooqi and his buddy Omar Sheikh come in.

 

Omar Sheikh was a big man in the ISI controlled JeM, he was British educated and radicalized after a visit to Pakistan in 1993. Farooqi was, in essence, his strongman who was the one who actually attempted to perform those two assassination attempts on General Musharaff mentioned earlier.

 

Not long after the video of Daniel Pearl's foul murder is released Pakistan begins a massive manhunt with the main targets being Sheikh and Farooqi. Amazingly, Sheikh turns himself in, not to Pakistani government police or security forces, but to Punjab Home Secretary Brigadier Ijaz Shah, who was a top ISI man, controlling ISI operations in Lahore at one point several years ago. He was held by Shah for a week before civilian authorities were aware of it.

 

Three months later, after a closed trial, Omar Sheikh is executed for the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl despite that he recanted on his confession and could prove no direct link to him and the murder of Daniel Pearl but is executed anyway since there was plentiful evidence of his kidnapping of British and American tourists in 1994. The American government rejects requests by India to pressure Pakistan in extraditing Omar Sheikh for interrogation even after India says it will allow American intelligence agents to perform the interrogation without Indian police present. Though recanting his previous confession, Sheikh still refuses to describe what happened in that mysterious week after he turned himself in to Brigadier Shah all the way to his execution.

 

And now the number two man suspected in the murder is conviently killed in a firefight. There is more than enough from open sources to suspect that there is a lot of questions dealing with Pearl's murder, mostly involving embarassing things for both the Pakistani and American governments. It's clear that Farooqi and Sheikh simply knew too much (to use the cliche) and that ISI has Pearl's blood on its hands. Now that they're both dead we probably will never know the truth.

 

So is this a victory for us? You decide.

[Styles 0]

 

um...yey?

[Lil' Bitch 0]

I always thought they killed Pearl just because he was Jewish.

[Slayer 0]

cut very long story (which I did read)

Well that was certainly bittersweet...