Court security tight for Pearl kidnap hearing

Armed police were today guarding an anti-terrorism court in Karachi, Pakistan, for a closed-door hearing of the British former public schoolboy who confessed to masterminding the kidnapping of murdered US reporter Daniel Pearl.

Three other Islamic militants are to be charged in the murder of the reporter today, along with Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, from Wanstead, east London.

Saeed, 28, confessed to the abduction at a pre-trial hearing. He was already in custody when US officials in Karachi last week received a video-tape showing Pearl’s gruesome murder.

In their hunt for the remaining suspects, police believe they may have found a link to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist network, citing the involvement of three Arabs who were allegedly seen accompanying a key suspect.

Meanwhile, Newsweek magazine said Saeed was secretly indicted last year by a US federal grand jury for a foiled 1994 kidnapping.

Pearl, 38, the Wall Street Journal’s South Asia bureau chief, had been trying to contact Islamic radical groups and investigate possible links between Londoner Richard Reid and the al-Qaida terrorist network. Reid was arrested on a transatlantic flight with bombs in his trainers.

Saeed told the court Pearl’s kidnapping was in protest against Pakistan’s support for the US-led war on terror after the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington.

Pearl’s body has not been found, and several suspects remain at large.

Appearing with Saeed in court today are three men accused of sending e-mails announcing the January 23 kidnapping. They were also in custody when the video-tape became public.

In a closed-door session last week, 21-year-old suspect Fahad Naseem admitted sending e-mails announcing Pearl’s kidnapping under orders from Saeed.

Kidnapping and murder are capital offences in Pakistan, carrying the death penalty.

The other two co-defendants - Sheikh Mohammed Adeel, a police constable, and Naseem’s cousin, Salman Saqib - have not confessed to any crime.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said bringing Saeed to America to stand trial is a possibility.

‘‘The United States government may very well want to try to extradite the people involved if possible for the killing of an American, which would seem to me as a non-lawyer to be a reasonable thing,’’ Rumsfeld said.

Authorities offered little information about the identity of the three Arab suspects or what role they may have played. But their alleged involvement - combined with investigators’ revelation that Saeed said he met personally with bin Laden in Afghanistan after the September 11 terror attacks in the US - suggested an al-Qaida link.

Police believe a dozen or more people were involved in Pearl’s abduction and murder, and that most of them have spent time in Afghanistan as supporters of the country’s former Taliban regime. Their links to al-Qaida are being studied, investigators said.