Pursuing Pearl's Killers

Pursuing Pearl's Killers

The Boston Globe
February 28, 2002

As Pakistani and US officials discuss the extradition of Omar Sheikh, the notorious Islamicist who allegedly lured Daniel Pearl to his captors, both governments need to weigh considerations that are not purely legal. The pursuit of Pearl's killers should be treated as an aspect of the war on terrorism, one that leads to the terrorists' heart of darkness.

Pearl's cruel murder cannot be considered solely as a criminal matter. Investigators in Pakistan are conscious of Omar's longstanding connections to elements of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, known as ISI, and of the suspicious way in which he turned himself over on Feb. 5 to a former ISI connection who now occupies the powerful post of Home Secretary in Punjab Province. For the next six days Pakistani police said they were searching for Omar. And although Omar already knew by Feb. 1 that his accomplices had killed Pearl, Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, was allowed to place himself in the embarrassing position of saying he believed Pearl was still alive.

These are among the reasons that the Pakistani investigation of Pearl's murder has become a crucial part of Musharraf's courageous purge of terrorist collaborators in the ISI and the Pakistani military. There have been more than 2,000 arrests of Islamic extremists since the start of the year, and powerful ISI figures such as the senior officer in charge of Jaish-e Mohammad, the Kashmir-oriented group to which Omar belonged, have been stripped of their power and fired.

Pakistani police are operating on the assumption that the kidnapping and killing of Pearl was carried out too professionally to be the work of amateurs. The compartmentalization of small groups or cells carrying out disparate tasks suggests either an Al Qaeda operation or one that at least had some guidance from former ISI professionals.

But American intelligence has documents captured at Al Qaeda sites in Afghanistan that point much more suggestively to Al Qaeda as the ultimate sponsor of Pearl's kidnapping and murder. One of the documents, originally intended for Mohammed Atef, the Al Qaeda chief of military operations who is believed to have been killed by US bombing in Afghanistan, outlined a plan to kidnap Americans, execute them in a ritual manner, and videotape the murder. The aim was to terrify and demoralize Americans in the same way that the Al Qaeda authors of the plan believed Americans had been demoralized in Somalia in 1993, when dead US soldiers were dragged through the streets.

If Pearl's murder was an Al Qaeda operation, the most important thing to do now is to pursue the investigation all the way to the masterminds' heart of darkness. The question of extradition should be secondary.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of criminal justice, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.