Closing In On Kidnap Suspect

Closing In On Kidnap Suspect

Pakistan hopes to net abductor of U.S. reporter soon

by Dave Goldiner
The New York Daily News
February 7, 2002

Pakistani investigators zeroed in on a notorious London-born Islamic militant yesterday as they pressed the search for kidnapped reporter Daniel Pearl.

Authorities arrested several members of a radical group led by Sheik Omar Saeed, a British-educated militant who has kidnapped Westerners before and was freed by India in a deal to end a 1999 hijacking.

"We have made significant progress, and we hope to recover him soon," Karachi, Pakistan, Police Chief Sayed Kamal Shah said. "We are working day and night, around the clock." Some of the suspects have fingered Saeed, 27, who has close ties to Al Qaeda, as the man who ordered them to E-mail photos of a shackled Pearl to media organizations.

Published reports in Britain also have named Saeed as a suspect in the wiring of $100,000 to hijacker Mohamed Atta in the weeks before the Sept. 11 terror attacks - a sign of his close ties to Osama Bin Laden's terror network.

Pearl, 38, a Wall Street Journal reporter, disappeared Jan. 23 in Karachi. He was trying to gather information for a story about alleged shoe bomber Richard Reid, who, like Saeed, was born and bred in London before joining Islamic militants in South Asia. Abductions similar Investigators focused on Saeed because the Pearl kidnapping closely mirrors the wave of abductions he admitted carrying out in India in the mid-1990s.

Saeed prowled New Delhi and helped snatch four foreigners - three Britons and an American - in hopes of winning freedom for a jailed radical cleric in 1994.

"Remember, American first priority, then British and French," he was told by a Pakistani leader of his cell, Saeed recalled in Indian court papers.

The plot was foiled and the hostages freed unharmed. Saeed was jailed until 1999, when he was released in a deal to free about 150 hostages aboard a hijacked Indian Airlines jet.

Indian officials flew him and two other militants to Kandahar, Afghanistan, where he apparently was protected by the Taliban and Al Qaeda before slipping back into Pakistan.

Like Bin Laden, Saeed grew up rich. He was the son of a wealthy Pakistani merchant in London's East End and studied as a teenager at the elite London School of Economics.

But he turned to radical Islam after a trip to ethnically torn Bosnia and soon joined radicals fighting India in disputed Kashmir province.

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