A Struggle in The Shadows: How Pakistan's Spy Service May Have Tried to Spring Daniel Pearl

Newsweek
February 25, 2002

Hauled into a Karachi courtroom last week, the suspected mastermind of the plot to kidnap Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl calmly admitted his guilt. "Right or wrong, I had my reasons," Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh told the court. "I think the country shouldn't be catering to America's needs." Then Saeed delivered a brutal message to Pearl's pregnant wife, Mariane, and to his anxious newspaper colleagues: "As far as I understand, he's dead," Saeed said matter-of-factly, adding that Pearl had been killed by his captors during an escape attempt at the end of January. Pakistani officials said Saeed was bluffing, and a Wall Street Journal spokesman said, "We remain confident that Danny is still alive."

The known facts suggested that Pearl, alive or dead, had vanished in the twilight zone between terrorism and Pakistani politics. Police said Saeed and his accomplices belong to Jaish-e-Mohammed, a militant Islamic group with ties to Al Qaeda that has long been involved in the struggle for control of Kashmir. Until they were banned by President Pervez Musharraf, such groups had the covert support of Pakistan's powerful Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI). Saeed himself was probably an ISI "asset," a senior Pakistani official told NEWSWEEK, and when he surrendered on Feb. 5, ISI agents held him incommunicado until Feb. 12 before turning him over to police. NEWSWEEK's source suggested that the ISI, aware that the kidnapping was deeply embarrassing to Musharraf, tried and failed to make a deal for Pearl's release. But no one could be sure, and given the concern about militants within ISI, questions about Saeed's interrogation were likely to persist. In Washington, FBI officials were said to be furious that Pakistani officials had kept Saeed's arrest secret for fully a week.

Saeed is now the target of an active grand jury investigation in the United States, NEWSWEEK has learned. Justice Department sources say the grand jury is looking at the Pearl abduction and other kidnapping plots involving U.S. citizens that date back to 1994. Saeed could be indicted in a matter of weeks, these sources say, and the United States would then ask Pakistan to turn him over to American authorities. Because Saeed is a British citizen, Britain may seek to prosecute him first. In Karachi, meanwhile, Pakistani police were scouring the slums for another member of the kidnap team, Imtiaz Siddiqi, also known as Asim and Hyder. Siddiqi and Saeed are old friends: according to Pakistani investigators, Siddiqi was one of four gunmen who hijacked an Indian airliner in 1999, then bargained for Saeed's release from prison. If Saeed is telling the truth now, Siddiqi is the guy who knows what really happened to Daniel Pearl.

With Daniel Klaidman

© 2002 Newsweek, Inc.

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