Captured al-Qaida operative may have murdered Pearl

The alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, could also turn out to be the man who murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, a Pakistani intelligence official has said.

Mohammed, said to be the third most powerful man in the al-Qaida terror network, was startled awake and arrested early on Saturday by 25 heavily-armed security officers who kicked down a bolted front door of the two-storey bungalow he occupied in Rawalpindi, outside the capital.

One of three Pakistanis who last May led authorities to Pearl’s body, buried in a shallow grave in the southern city of Karachi, had implicated Mohammed in the murder, the official said yesterday.

The three men, members of the banned group Lashkar-e-Janghvi, were never charged in connection with Pearl’s death.

Pearl was kidnapped on January 23 last year while he was investigating links between Islamic extremist groups in Pakistan and the so-called British-born shoe bomber, Richard Reid. A month later, a gruesome videotape of his killing was given to the US Consulate in Karachi.

A Karachi police investigator also said one of the three men – who investigators had suspected of Pearl’s kidnapping and death – implicated Mohammed, but the suspect later retracted his accusation.

Others close to the investigation said Arabic-speaking men – Mohammed was from Arabic-speaking Kuwait – were involved in the murder. The men of Middle Eastern origin were present at the small compound where Pearl was held until his death, and they participated in the making of the videotape, the sources said.

Pakistani courts have sentenced to death Britain-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, accused of arranging Pearl’s kidnapping. Three other militants were sentenced to life for their part. None of the men were accused of actually carrying out the killing.

Pearl’s four kidnappers were linked to Jaish-e Mohammed and Harakat-ul Mujahedeen, two militant groups banned by Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf. The groups have close ties to Afghanistan’s deposed Taliban and are known to have trained activists in the country – often under the tutelage of al-Qaida.

US counterterrorism officials said they have no information that suggests Mohammed performed or directed the killing of Pearl. It is not known if he was even aware of the plot beforehand, the officials said.

In Washington yesterday, US President George W Bush expressed his appreciation to General Musharraf for Pakistan’s help in the arrest, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

“This is a very serious development and a blow to al-Qaida,” Mr Fleischer said.

In Saturday’s arrest, Mohammed was seized with a second foreigner – identified by interior minister Faisal Salah Hayyat as a Somali – and a Pakistani, Ahmed Abdul Qudus, whose family owns the Rawalpindi home.

Qudus’s family are members of one of Pakistan’s oldest and best organised religious parties, Jamaat-e-Islami, and his mother was a local leader of the party’s women’s wing. The organisation is stridently opposed to Pakistan’s alliance with the US in Afghanistan, and defends harbouring al-Qaida suspects as fellow Muslims. The party questions al-Qaida’s existence.

Jamaat-e-Islami is a partner in the six-party coalition of radical religious parties that rule in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province which borders Afghanistan.

US intelligence reports say al-Qaida and Taliban fugitives have found refuge in the semiautonomous tribal regions of Pakistan that border Afghanistan.

Taliban and loyalists of renegade Afghan rebel leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar tell The Associated Press that Osama bin Laden and his main lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are constantly on the move in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan with only four or five of their closest confidants.

Mohammed is the third top al-Qaida man to be arrested in Pakistan – all in cities. Former Taliban and Hekmatyar loyalists say the safest area is in the tribal regions of Pakistan or the mountains of Afghanistan.