Pakistan: Now or Never? Omar Sheikh, a childhood friend turned Pakistani militant By Daniel Flynn September 25, 2008

Looking back, Omar’s years in Pakistan were the first step in a transformation which was completed when he went to the London School of Economics and threw himself into the cause of persecuted Muslims in Bosnia. After a mysterious trip there at the end of his first year in 1993, Omar dropped out of his studies and his conversion to militancy began. http://blogs.reuters.com/pakistan/2008/09/25/omar-sheikh-a-childhood-friend-turned-pakistani-militant/ The weekend bomb which tore through the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, killing 53 people, was a reminder that Pakistan is entering the eye of the storm of Islamist militancy. But for me, it was also a more personal reminder of a childhood friend who went from a suburban upbringing in London to become one of Pakistan’s most notorious militants. Omar Sheikh, a member of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (Army of the Prophet) organisation which has been linked to the bombing, is currently on death row in Pakistan for organising the kidnapping and beheading of the brilliant Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi in February, 2002. I had long since lost contact with Omar since we both graduated from Forest School in north London in 1992 and the sight of a heavily bearded Sheikh flanked by Pakistani police during the Pearl trial came as a shock. My jumbled memories of Omar were of a tall, lantern-jawed adolescent with dark-rimmed glasses, a serious but polite demeanour, a childish sense of humour but an unblinking, fearless appetite for a fight. Even as a boy, he spoke feverishly and often of “My Country” and praised the authoritarian and strictly Islamic regime of General Zia — who ousted and killed Benazir Bhutto’s father and helped the mujahedin throw the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Omar Sheikh in Karachi in 2002A tangle of contradictions, Omar’s other great love aside from patriotism was arm-wrestling and the would-be Islamist would often be found in smoky pubs — drinking only milk — competing with his team. We had both started at Forest School at the age of 11 and I remember he never cried at anything – unless he was angry with himself. He loved chess and often spent his lunch breaks pouring over a chess board with a group of friends who were mainly from Sri Lankan, Indian or Bengali families. The son of a clothes merchant in Wanstead, north London, Omar lived in a nondescript house in a cul-de-sac, where he invited me for lunch after he returned from three years of schooling in Pakistan at the age of 16. Wary of England’s influence, Omar’s father sent him to study at Lahore’s exclusive and disciplinarian Aitchison school — he returned a junior boxing champion and full of stories of contacts with organised crime, gun battles in the ghettos of Lahore, visits to brothels. At the time I thought they were all tall stories – as the chess-lover that he was, Omar’s conversation was full of bluffs and feints — but now I’m not so sure. What I remember of our long lunch were Omar’s fascination with girls and his shock at the liberal relations between young girls and boys in England. File photo of coffin of Daniel Pearl in KarachiIn the sixth form, he became interested in economics, dreamed of going to study in the United States at Harvard, and even sat the SAT exams, and he went everywhere with a sturdy black plastic suitcase which weighed a ton (I think he carried weights around to pump up his muscles for arm-wrestling). He seldom had fights at school after he returned from Pakistan and had trained as a boxer, but he would often joke around by letting his fists fly within inches of your face as if he were shadow boxing. Looking back, Omar’s years in Pakistan were the first step in a transformation which was completed when he went to the London School of Economics and threw himself into the cause of persecuted Muslims in Bosnia. After a mysterious trip there at the end of his first year in 1993, Omar dropped out of his studies and his conversion to militancy began. By the time of the Pearl kidnapping, Sheikh was already a high-profile militant: he had been detained in India in 1994 for the kidnapping of three Britons and an American in the volatile Kashmir region. Via our school, his lawyer asked if I would be willing to testify as a character witness at his trial, a request I turned down. In any case, I couldn’t see what my testimony as a character witness could achieve, given that Omar appeared to have undergone an ideological transformation by that stage. Finally, Omar walked free in 1999 when Islamist militants hijacked an Indian Airlines flight with 155 people on board from Kathmandu, forcing it to land in Kandahar in Afghanistan. The Indian government exchanged Omar and two other prisoners in return for the release of the passengers and crew. In many ways, Omar’s Westernised identity made him a precious commodity in the militant world. In his book “Who Killed Daniel Pearl?”, left-wing French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy cites evidence Sheikh had spent time with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and the al Qaeda founder referred to the genteel and well-educated economist as “my favourite son”. Levi also cites evidence Sheikh was a conduit for funds from the head of Pakistan’s fractious but powerful military intelligence agency ISI to the pilots of the 9/11 planes in the United States. The Wall Street Journal’s Pearl was investigating the embarrassing allegations that one of the U.S. government’s most important allies in fighting terrorism was actually linked to the New York attacks at the time he was kidnapped — a charge Pakistan has denied. Sheikh appears to have spent a week in the hands of the ISI before being turned over for trial for Pearl’s killing, and Pakistan has steadfastly refused to hand him over to US authorities. Sheikh remains a mysterious figure: Pakistan’s former president Pervez Musharraf alleged he was actually working for British intelligence and downplayed his significance. Even before the July 7, 2005 bomb attacks on London, Omar was an early reminder of the fragmented and conflicted identity of some young Muslims in England. Indeed, the Jaish-e-Mohammed group, linked to Pearl’s beheading and the Islamabad bombing, is alleged to receive much of its funding from Pakistanis living in Britain. While Omar had a reckless longing for adventure which propelled him along his path to radicalism, he also shared with many second-generation immigrants to Britain a longing to belong and he struggled to find anything in British society with which he could strongly identify. Can Britain be called a functioning multi-cultural society? Has the appeal of armed Islamist groups been heightened by Britain’s military intervention in Muslim states like Iraq and Afghanistan? And as the United States frets about the risks of young men with western passports being trained up by militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas to carry out suicide bombings at home, what can be done to prevent them from being drawn into militant circles?

Sentenced to death, but Omar Sheikh has a chilling message - the war must carry on (Telegraph, 16 July, 2002)

During 1993 Omar Saeed #Sheikh was in #Bosnia and Herzegovina, then in the middle of the war. He arrived with the Muslim charity called Convoy of Mercy, but ended up with #mujahedin fighters supporting the Bosnian forces against the Serbs and Croats. While at Split harbor (Croatia), Sheikh became ill. Abdur Raif, a #Pakistani who had fought in #Afghanistan, helped him recuperate, and pointed him towards Bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan. Sheikh arrived in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1994. From there he crossed to the Khalid bin Waleed training camp in Afghanistan.https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/sentenced-to-death-but-omar-sheikh-has-a-chilling-message-the-war-must-carry-on-184490.html Sentenced to death, but Omar Sheikh has a chilling message - the war must carry on By Kim Sengupta Tuesday 16 July 2002 00:00 A Briton was condemned to death by a Pakistani court yesterday after being convicted of the kidnapping and savage murder of the American journalist Daniel Pearl. Omar Saeed Sheikh, a London-born Muslim, reacted by threatening to kill the judge and calling for a jihad against "Kafirs" (non-Muslims). Sheikh, 38, was accused during the trial – held at a court that was closed to the public in Hyderabad – of playing a key role in the abduction of Mr Pearl, a reporter with The Wall Street Journal, in the Pakistani city of Karachi. The dismembered body of Mr Pearl, also 38, was found in a shallow grave. A videotape was later circulated in which his captors forced him to say that he was Jewish before cutting his throat. Mr Pearl's widow, Mariane, was pregnant at the time of his disappearance, and she has since given birth to their son, Adam. After the verdict, Mr Pearl's family thanked the authorities for bringing Sheikh and three accomplices, who were sentenced to life imprisonment. But they added: " We hope and trust that the search for the remaining abductors will continue, so that all accomplices in this unthinkable crime will be brought to justice." There is widespread suspicion that the Pakistani secret service, InterServices Intelligence, had been complicit in the murder, and had subsequently protected Sheikh. Security sources have told The Independent that a senior ISI officer, based in London, had paid for Sheikh's legal fees in the mid-1990s when he was under arrest in India on charges of kidnapping four tourists, three Britons and an American. After the sentence, Sheikh issued a statement from his prison cell saying: "I will see whether who wants to kill me, will kill me first, or get himself killed ... It is a decisive war between Islam and Kafirs, and everyone is individually proving on which side he is." The Foreign Office welcomed the guilty verdicts, but said it was opposed to the death penalty. Sheikh's family, in London, called it "a grotesque miscarriage of justice", and pledged to fight for his release. His brother Awais said in the statement: "I have recently returned from Pakistan, and all I can say is that this 'trial' has been farcical to the point of absurdity. The Pakistani anti-terrorism courts are notorious for the substantially weaker standards of proof required for a conviction ... An appeal is being prepared to take this matter to the High Court. We are confident that Sheikh will be found innocent and acquitted." There were, according to Western intelligence services, about 4,000 British Muslims who went off to fight in the jihad for Islam. Most came back, chastened, after a few weeks of weapons training. A few fought. Sheikh chose to specialise in kidnapping and killing. That, at least, is the official British, American, Indian and Pakistani view of Sheikh. His parents claim he was nothing of the kind, but just an idealistic charity worker moved by suffering. In this case, the truth does not lie somewhere in the middle. By all available evidence, and his own boasts, freely offered, of lethal violence, he was complicit in not just one, but numerous murders. It may be a cliché to ask what turned this upper-middle-class boy with a liberal education at a minor public school to embrace Osama bin Laden's obscurantist brand of Islam and homicidal anti-Semitism. However, there are no easy answers. There are, of course, generations in the West who went off to fight in what they considered a just cause – from the International Brigade fighting Franco, to those of Irish extraction who joined the IRA. But until he suddenly announced that he wanted to campaign for oppressed Muslims, there is nothing in his background to suggest he would become so notorious. His father, Saeed Sheikh, who ran his own successful clothing company, and his mother, Qauissia, are Muslims who go to the mosque, but are not particularly strict in their practice. The family home, in Wanstead, north-east London, is in an area that up-and-coming businessmen aspire to. Sheikh was born, under the NHS, at the nearby Whipps Cross Hospital. Later the couple had two other children, Awais and Hajira. He went to the local primary school, Nightingale, and was then moved to Forest, with fees of £8,000 a year, where fellow pupils included the future England cricket captain Nasser Hussain and Manchester United's South African-born player Quinton Fortune. When Sheikh was 13 the family moved back, temporarily, to Pakistan. It has been suggested that this was because his father was worried about the moral pollution of the West. Sheikh's journey into extremism began then. But relations say the move was due to family and commercial reasons. When Sheikh was 16 the family moved back to England, and he resumed his studies at Forest. He was bigger and more muscular, and bragging that he had hijacked a bus in Pakistan and had become a national kickboxing champion. The latter was untrue, but he had taken up arm-wrestling and qualified for international events after, his schoolfriends say, winning some contests by lowering his age to fight younger opponents. Sheikh was expelled from Forest for bullying and beating up younger pupils and demanding money from them. His parents sent him to a "crammer", and he gained the required A Level grades to get into the London School of Economics to read mathematics and statistics. While there, Sheikh went during a summer vacation to Bosnia, then in the middle of the Balkan war, to work for a Muslim charity called Convoy of Mercy. He met up with mujahedin fighters supporting the Bosnian forces against the Serbs and Croats. At Split, near the Croatian border, Sheikh became ill. Abdur Raif, a Pakistani who had fought in Afghanistan, helped him recuperate, and pointed him towards Mr bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan. Sheikh arrived in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1994. From there he crossed to the Khalid bin Waleed training camp in Afghanistan. Later that year Sheikh returned to Britain, where dropped his dual Pakistani and British nationality for a British one to get an Indian visa. He next turned up in Delhi for his first mission – to kidnap Western tourists for ransom. His victims were backpackers whom he invited back to his flat, where they were seized by waiting Kashmiri terrorists. A few weeks later Indian police rescued the hostages. Sheikh was wounded and treated at a private hospital, where he was kept under guard. With the trial still pending, Sheikh was released in December 1999 when Islamist terrorists hijacked an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar. Sheikh is believed to have returned to his family home in Lahore. But he retained his terrorist links and his next big operation came after 11 September. This time his victim was Daniel Pearl.

Former MI6 Agent Implicated In 9/11 'The 9/11 Omar Sheikh Files' Media References

https://www.nlpwessex.org/docs/sheikhmedia.htm?fbclid=IwAR2yOm-7jhZfaI5W_fAeviZHsVdYVPVlBzWV1cDmK7vSrjU0nI6mBy28s-4 British Citizen Omar Sheikh Why Is He Not On Trial For His Reported Role In 9/11? "[President of Pakistan] General Musharraf says that [Omar] Sheikh.... was recruited by MI6 while he was studying at the London School of Economics and sent to the Balkans to take part in jihad operations there." 'America paid us to hand over al-Qaeda suspects' London Times, 25 September 2006 "There are reports that US investigators have uncovered evidence of financial transfers linking Osama Bin Laden to the 11 September attacks on America. According to FBI sources, Mustafa Mohamed Ahmad, a suspected Bin Laden financial operative, transferred money to Mohamed Atta, one of the hijackers, in the days running up to the attacks... Mr Ahmad, also known as Sheikh Saeed, is one of 27 individuals or groups with a known link to Bin Laden who have had their assets in America frozen." Bin Laden's 'cash link' to hijackers BBC Online, 1 October 2001 "The London School of Economics, known for its far-Left radicalism in the 1960s, has been host to at least three al-Qa'eda-linked terrorists, The Telegraph has been told. The three - including one man called Ahmed Omar Sheikh - have been revealed as having links with the LSE in an intelligence file seen by this newspaper and now being studied by police.... Omar Sheikh... has... been named as one of the key financiers of Mohammed Atta, the pilot of one of the jets that hit the World Trade Centre on September 11." Al-Qa'eda terror trio linked to London School of 'Extremists' Telegraph, 27 January 2002 "The Times has learnt from Pakistani security sources that while in Pakistan some of the [7/7 London] Tube bombers met leading figures from an outlawed terror group called Jaish-e-Mohammed, which has been actively recruiting Britons from universities and colleges since the early 1990s.... In the past Jaish has boasted of many British Muslim volunteers in its ranks. Among them is Ahmed Omar Sheikh, a former LSE student and public schoolboy from Woodford, northeast London, who abandoned his studies in 1993. He is now facing a death sentence in Pakistan for the abduction and murder of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter." 'Holy warrior' casts light on dark links to Pakistan London Times, 18 July 2005 "Omar Sheikh, a British-born Islamist, was sentenced to hang in Pakistan for murdering a journalist, Daniel Pearl, in 2002. The US government and Pearl's wife have acknowledged he was not responsible." Brain-damaged man faces death for drug smuggling Independent, 5 April 2007 Media Links On This Page Overview - From MI6 And The Balkans To 9/11 And Beyond Where The Omar Sheikh Trail Leads Media Reports Sheikh As MI6 Agent Media Reports ISI/Sheikh Alleged Involvement in 911 Media Reports Trial of Sheikh for Murder of Daniel Pearl Media Reports It Was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Not Omar Sheikh Who Murdered Daniel Pearl Media Reports Omar Sheikh And The 7/7 London Bombings Media Reports Omar Sheikh And The Aircraft Bomb Plot August 2006 Media Reports Omar Sheikh From His Home Town Newspaper In The UK Alternative Media Reports On Sheikh And Related Areas Mariane Pearl's And Asra Nomanl's Search For The Truth What Was Daniel Pearl Doing In Pakistan Before He Was Killed? Omar Sheikh And His Connections To 9/11, MI6, And The Balkans Further News Updates On Omar Sheikh Saga Since August 2008 Overview - From MI6 And The Balkans To 9/11 And Beyond Where The Omar Sheikh Trail Leads Mahmood.jpg (6183 bytes) Lt General Mahmoud Ahmed Head Of Pakistan's ISI Intelligence Service On 9/11 Where The Omar Sheikh Trail Leads Lt General Mahmoud Ahmed ".... the corporate media are still largely sticking to the demonstrably false Official Story of 911... So research into the events tends to be by alternative sources. Dissidents believe that the blocking of FBI agents who could have stopped the 911 plot was deliberate act of complicity by the Bush Junta whose popularity and pre-existing invasion goals [of Afghanistan and Iraq] were given an enormous boost by success of the attacks. Now the Natural Law Party has produced a superb piece of research into the British connection [with] Al Qaida.... ex-MI5 employee David Shayler has demonstrated that MI6 was plotting with elements linked to Al Qaida to assassinate Ghadaffi as late as the mid nineties... These are not the only links between Al Qaida and Bush/Blair..... the NLP has investigated the murder of [American] journalist Daniel Pearl and highlights an astonishing fact: The [British] Pakistani sentenced to death for the murder of Pearl, Omar Sheikh, is the same Al Qaida contact who wired USD 100,000 to Mohammed Atta shortly before 911 on the instructions of the head of Pakistani Intelligence General Mahmoud who quietly resigned soon after. Astonishingly, Mahmoud on the days around the 911 attacks was in a series of secret top level meetings in the White House and with hawkish senators on Capitol Hill .... The NLP suspects that Pearl was murdered because he was investigating the smoking gun USD 100,000 transaction and that Sheikh was framed for the murder to stop him talking... [A British MP] has put down a question on the matter to the Foreign Office, which they have refused to answer... " Ian Henshall, chair of INK the Alternative Publishers umbrella group in the UK and publisher of 911dossier.co.uk Crisis Newsletter, 27 January 2003 British Parliamentary Question On Omar Sheikh "To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he has received a response from the Pakistan Government for his request for information on the detention of Mr. Sheikh; and if it provides evidence of a link between Mr. Sheikh and the September 11 attacks." Question asked through the British House of Commons by Member of Parliament Published in Hansard, the official British parliamentary record, 16 Dec 2002 "As the legal process [in relation to Sheikh's alleged murder of Pearl] is ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment on possible linkages to other terrorist crimes." Answer provided by Foreign Office Minister for South Asia and the Far East Published in Hansard, the official British parliamentary record, 16 Dec 2002 Sheikh And The ISI "There are reports that US investigators have uncovered evidence of financial transfers linking Osama Bin Laden to the 11 September attacks on America. According to FBI sources, Mustafa Mohamed Ahmad, a suspected Bin Laden financial operative, transferred money to Mohamed Atta, one of the hijackers, in the days running up to the attacks. Furthermore Atta and two of the other hijackers transferred some $15,000 back to an account under the same name just two days before the attacks. Mr Ahmad, also known as [Omar] Sheikh Saeed, is one of 27 individuals or groups with a known link to Bin Laden who have had their assets in America frozen... Cash transfers were made to Atta via a money service in Florida on 8 and 9 September from an account in Dubai, under the name of Mustafa Ahmad." Bin Laden's 'cash link' to hijackers BBC Online, 1 October 2001 "Director General of Pakistan's Inter- Services Intelligence (ISI) Lt Gen Mahmud Ahmed has been replaced after the FBI investigators established credible links between him and Umar Sheikh, one of the three militants released in exchange for passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines plane in 1999. The FBI team, which had sought adequate inputs about various terrorists including Sheikh from the intelligence agencies, was working on the linkages between Sheikh and former ISI chief Gen Mahmud which are believed to have been substantiated, reports PTI website. Informed sources said there were enough indications with the US intelligence agencies that it was at Gen Mahmud's instruction that Sheikh had transferred 100,000 US dollars into the account of Mohammed Atta, one of the lead terrorists in strikes at the World Trade Centre on Sept 11, it adds." Gen Mahmud's exit due to links with Umar Sheikh Dawn (Pakistan), 9 October 2001 "It was in Pakistan where Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter, was murdered in 2002. Pakistan has refused to extradite Omar Saeed Sheikh, the British-born Muslim convicted of the killing, prompting speculation that it fears what he might say. Sheikh was in ISI custody for a week before the FBI was informed and is reported to have given himself up to his former ISI handler." Just whose side is Pakistan really on? Sunday Times, 13 August 2006 "The FBI conducted a detailed financial investigation/analysis of the 19 hijackers and their support network, following the September 11th attacks.... A continuing investigation, in coordination with the PENTTBOMB Team, has traced the origin of the funding of 9/11 back to financial accounts in Pakistan...." 'Terrorism Financing: Origination, Organization, and Prevention' John S. Pistole, Deputy Assistant Director, Counterterrorism Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, 31 July 2003 "We [Daniel Pearl and his wife Mariane] first came to Karachi four month's ago: September 12, 2001. We flew in from New Delhi.... We had witnessed the [911] attacks almost as they had happened on CNN ... We were here to ask the big questions: Who was responsible for the attacks? Who financed them? Who protected the terrorists?.... In October, the FBI were looking for a link between Omar Saeed Sheikh and the then director of the ISI, Lieutenant General Mahmood Ahmed. They wanted to know who instructed Omar to wire the $100,000 to Mohammed Atta. I read that Ahmed had been dismissed as head of the ISI by President Musharraf on October 7, 2001. So it appeared Omar may have associated with the head of ISI and Al Qaeda. He surrendered to another former ISI officer who held him in custody for a week until just one day before Musharraf met with President Bush.... Questions bounce back and forth in my brain like a Ping-Pong ball gone wild. The distinctions between good and bad, government organisations and terrorist organisations, are not simply fading: they seem to be faces of the same coin. Did Musharraf know Omar was in custody? Could he not know? The CIA (God only knows what their position is here) didn't know?" 'A Mighty Heart' by Mariane Pearl, widow of Daniel Pearl Virago Press, 2003 "The reason why people kill journalists is they don’t want to let them finish their work. We can finish their work and send a really clear message that whatever it is you’re trying to stop will not be stopped." Asra Nomani, former colleague and friend of murdered Wall St journalist Daniel Pearl The Pearl Project Picks Up the Story Where the Slain Reporter Left Off Forward, 12 August 2009 "I was surprised at the evidence that there were foreign governments involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the terrorists in the United States. I am stunned that we have not done a better job of pursuing that to determine if other terrorists received similar support and, even more important, if the infrastructure of a foreign government assisting terrorists still exists for the current generation of terrorists who are here planning the next plots. To me that is an extremely significant issue and most of that information is classified, I think overly-classified. I believe the American people should know the extent of the challenge that we face in terms of foreign government involvement. That would motivate the government to take action." Senator Bob Graham, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee On Intelligence Improving Intelligence PBS Online, 11 December 2002 "I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted not just in financing -- although that was part of it -- by a sovereign foreign government and that we have been derelict in our duty to track that down...It will become public at some point when it's turned over to the archives, but that's 20 or 30 years from now. .... I do not believe we got the full cooperation that we needed. As an example, as of today there are 13 requests outstanding with the FBI alone for additional information which would help us follow the trail -- including the trail of foreign government involvement. That agency and others have been reticent to come forward." Senator Bob Graham, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee On Intelligence Improving Intelligence PBS Online, 11 December 2002 Sheikh And MI6 "President Musharraf of Pakistan says that the CIA has secretly paid his government millions of dollars for handing over hundreds of al-Qaeda suspects to America..... The revelation comes from General Musharraf’s memoir, In the Line of Fire, which begins serialisation in The Times today and will further embarrass the White House at a time when relations between the US and Pakistan are already strained..... Pakistani intelligence chiefs are concerned that General Musharraf may jeopardise their relationship with British intelligence agencies after claiming that a convicted terrorist was once an MI6 informer. The President outlines the role played by a former London public schoolboy, Omar Sheikh, in the kidnap and murder of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter, in February 2002. General Musharraf says that Sheikh, who orchestrated the abduction, was recruited by MI6 while he was studying at the London School of Economics and sent to the Balkans to take part in jihad operations there. He alleges that Sheikh later double-crossed British intelligence. 'At some point he probably became a rogue or double agent,' General Musharraf says." 'America paid us to hand over al-Qaeda suspects' London Times, 25 September 2006 "Believe it or not, British intelligence actually hired some Al-Qaeda guys to help defend the Muslim rights in Albania and in Kosovo. That's when Al-Muhajiroun got started .....The CIA was funding the operation to defend the Muslims, British intelligence was doing the hiring and recruiting. Now we have a lot of detail on this because Captain Hook [Abu Hamza], the head of Al-Muhajiroun, [his] sidekick was Bakri Mohammed, another cleric. And back on October 16, 2001, he gave a detailed interview with al-Sharq al-Aswat, an Arabic newspaper in London, describing the relationship between British intelligence and the operations in Kosovo and Al-Muhajiroun. So that's how we get all these guys connected. It started in Kosovo...." Interview with former US Federal Prosecutor John Loftus Fox TV, 29 July 2005 "Sheikh Ahmad Omar Saeed, already sentenced to death for the grisly murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl, is being interrogated by Pakistani intelligence agencies in connection with the 7/7 London bombings.... The intelligence sources said that Omar is being interrogated in view of his British background. They said that the jehadi killer happens to be a London School of Economics graduate and the right hand man of the Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar, who used to enjoy close links with British-based jehadi group Al-Muhajiroun, suspected for the 7/7 bombing." Daniel Pearl killer grilled for 7/7 Daily News & Analysis (India), 29 June 2006 ".... all these guys [carrying out the 7/7 investigation] should be going back to an organization called Al-Muhajiroun, which means The Emigrants. It was the recruiting arm of Al-Qaeda in London; they specialized in recruiting kids whose families had emigrated to Britain but who had British passports. And they would use them for terrorist work .... the first group of course were primarily Pakistani. But what they had in common was they were all emigrant groups in Britain, recruited by this Al-Muhajiroun group. They were headed by the, Captain Hook [Abu Hamza], the imam in London the Finsbury Mosque, without the arm. He was the head of that organization. Now his assistant was a guy named Aswat, Haroon Rashid Aswat. Aswat is believed to be the mastermind of all the bombings in London... This is the guy, and what's really embarrassing is that the entire British police are out chasing him, and one wing of the British government, MI6 or the British Secret Service, has been hiding him.... What ties all these cells together was, back in the late 1990s, the leaders all worked for British intelligence in Kosovo. Believe it or not, British intelligence actually hired some Al-Qaeda guys to help defend the Muslim rights in Albania and in Kosovo. That's when Al-Muhajiroun got started .....The CIA was funding the operation to defend the Muslims, British intelligence was doing the hiring and recruiting. Now we have a lot of detail on this because Captain Hook [Abu Hamza], the head of Al-Muhajiroun, [his] sidekick was Bakri Mohammed, another cleric. And back on October 16, 2001, he gave a detailed interview with al-Sharq al-Aswat, an Arabic newspaper in London, describing the relationship between British intelligence and the operations in Kosovo and Al-Muhajiroun. So that's how we get all these guys connected. It started in Kosovo...." Interview with former US Federal Prosecutor John Loftus Fox TV, 29 July 2005 "Less well known is evidence of the British government's relationship with a wider Islamist terrorist network. During an interview on Fox TV this summer, the former US federal prosecutor John Loftus reported that British intelligence had used the al-Muhajiroun group in London to recruit Islamist militants with British passports for the war against the Serbs in Kosovo. Since July Scotland Yard has been interested in an alleged member of al-Muhajiroun, Haroon Rashid Aswat, who some sources have suggested could have been behind the London bombings. According to Loftus, Aswat was detained in Pakistan after leaving Britain, but was released after 24 hours. He was subsequently returned to Britain from Zambia, but has been detained solely for extradition to the US, not for questioning about the London bombings. Loftus claimed that Aswat is a British-backed double agent, pursued by the police but protected by MI6. One British Muslim of Pakistani origin radicalised by the civil war in Yugoslavia was LSE-educated Omar Saeed Sheikh. He is now in jail in Pakistan under sentence of death for the killing of the US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 - although many (including Pearl's widow and the US authorities) doubt that he committed the murder. However, reports from Pakistan suggest that Sheikh continues to be active from jail, keeping in touch with friends and followers in Britain. Sheikh was recruited as a student by Jaish-e-Muhammad (Army of Muhammad), which operates a network in Britain. It has actively recruited Britons from universities and colleges since the early 1990s, and has boasted of its numerous British Muslim volunteers. Investigations in Pakistan have suggested that on his visits there Shehzad Tanweer, one of the London suicide bombers, contacted members of two outlawed local groups and trained at two camps in Karachi and near Lahore. Indeed the network of groups now being uncovered in Pakistan may point to senior al-Qaida operatives having played a part in selecting members of the bombers' cell. The Observer Research Foundation has argued that there are even 'grounds to suspect that the [London] blasts were orchestrated by Omar Sheikh from his jail in Pakistan'. Why then is Omar Sheikh not being dealt with when he is already under sentence of death? Astonishingly his appeal to a higher court against the sentence was adjourned in July for the 32nd time and has since been adjourned indefinitely. This is all the more remarkable when this is the same Omar Sheikh who, at the behest of General Mahmood Ahmed, head of the ISI, wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the leading 9/11 hijacker, before the New York attacks, as confirmed by Dennis Lormel, director of FBI's financial crimes unit. Yet neither Ahmed nor Omar appears to have been sought for questioning by the US about 9/11. Indeed, the official 9/11 Commission Report of July 2004 sought to downplay the role of Pakistan with the comment: 'To date, the US government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance' - a statement of breathtaking disingenuousness. All this highlights the resistance to getting at the truth about the 9/11 attacks and to an effective crackdown on the forces fomenting terrorist bombings in the west, including Britain." Michael Meacher, former UK environment minister Britain now faces its own blowback Guardian, 10 September 2005 'The Pakistan Connection' - Michael Meacher - Guardian, 22 July 2004 'Britain now faces its own blowback' - Michael Meacher - Guardian, 10 September 2005 Omar Sheikh, 9/11, MI6, And The Balkans For More Information Click Here Media Reports On Omar Sheikh Sheikh As MI6 Agent London Times, 25 September 2006 London Times, 26 September 2006 Gulf Times, 29 September 2006 Frontpage Magazine, 9 October 2006 Middle East Times, 4 October 2006 ISI/Sheikh Alleged Involvement in 911 BBC Online, 1 October 2001 CNN, 6 October 2001 Times of India, 9 October 2001 Dawn Newspaper (Pakistan), 9 October 2001 Wall St Journal, 9 October 2001 Wall St Journal, 10 October 2001 Agence France-Presse, 10 October 2001 Australian, 10 October 2001 Frontline (The Hindu), 13 October 2001 Daily Excelsior (India), 18 October 2001 NewsInsight, 4 January 2002 PTI, 24 January 2002 Daily Telegraph, 27 January 2002 WorldNetDaily, 30 January 2002 Rediff.com, 6 February 2002 Associated Press, 9 February 2002 Guardian, 9 February 2002 The Tribune, 10 February 2002 The Hindu, 10 February 2002 The Hindu, 12 February 2002 London Times, 13 February 2002 The Tribune, 15 February 2002 PTI, 15 February 2002 India Today, 25 February 2002 Kashmir Herald, March 2002 South Asian Outlook, March 2002 Sunday Times, 21 April 2002 Bharat Rakshak Monitor, September-October 2002 Foreign Affairs, July/August 2003 Times of India, 1 August 2003 Asia Times, 1 October 2003 Guardian, 22 July 2004 United Press International, 26 July 2004 Rediff.com (India), 26 December 2004 The Hindu Business Line, 12 January 2005 The Tribune, 13 February 2005 Outlook India, 16 January 2005 Asia Times, 27 January 2005 London Times 23 April 2005 ('Sheikh Said') New Indian Express, 27 April 2005 Guardian, 10 September 2005 Asian News, 30th September 2005 Observer, 23 October 2005 Hindustan Times, 31 December 2005 United Press International, 3 January 2006 Daily Pioneer, 18 January 2006 Outlook India, 8 May 2006 Arab Online, 15 August 2006 Daily News & Analysis (India), 15 August 2006 FrontPageMagazine, 18 September 2006 Rediff.com (India), 21 September 2006 United Press International, 25 September 2006 Middle East Times, 4 October 2006 Times of India, 17 November 2015 Trial Of Sheikh For Murder Of Daniel Pearl Daily Telegraph, 22 February 2002 London Times, 25 February 2002 The News (Pakistan), 23 May 2002 Dawn Newspaper (Pakistan), 6 July 2002 BBC Online, 16 July 2002 Guardian, 16 July 2002 NewsInsight.net (India), 16 July 2002 BBC Online, 13 August 2002 Albawaba.com, 18 August 2002 BBC Online, 5 September 2002 Associated Press, 17 September 2002 United Press International, 30 September 2002 (Mirrored copy - click here) TIME magazine, 3 Feb 2003 New York Times, 22 October 2003 Pravda, 2 April 2004 Daily Telegraph, 9 May 2004 Hi Pakistan, 28 July 2004 Associated Press, 24 February 2005 ABC News/Reuters, 24 February 2005 Scotsman, 24 February 2005 Daily Times (Pakistan), 25 February 2005 Daily Times (Pakistan), 8 April 2005 Newsline (Pakistan), April 2005 BBC Online, 15 June 2005 Independent, 10 September 2005 United Press International, 3 January 2006 Daily Times (Pakistan), 8 January 2006 Daily Times (Pakistan), 15 February 2006 Reddif (India), 1 March 2006 Daily Times (Pakistan), 5 March 2006 Outlook India, 8 May 2006 Editor and Publisher, 11 May 2006 Committee To Protect Journalists, Spring/Summer 2006 Associated Press, 18 May 2006 Pakistan Times, 19 May 2006 Sin Chew Daily (Malaysia), 24 May 2006 Associated Press, 30 May 2006 Sunday Times, 13 August 2006 United Press International, 14 August 2006 Daily Pioneer, 27 September 2006 Independent, 21 November 2006 IANS, 23 November 2006 Daily Times (Pakistan), 25 November 2006 The News (Pakistan), 25 November 2006 BBC Online, 11 December 2006 IANS, 13 December 2006 Los Angeles Times, 17 June 2007 Press Trust of India, 21 May 2008 Telegraph (Calcutta), 21 June 2008 It Was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Not Omar Sheikh Who Murdered Daniel Pearl United Press International, 30 September 2002 (Mirrored copy - click here) TIME magazine, 3 Feb 2003 Daily Times (Pakistan), 3 March 2003 CNN, 4 March 2003 Reuters, 21 October 2003 BBC, 22 October 2003 New York Times, 22 October 2003 Salon, 22 October 2003 United Press International, 22 October 2003 Associated Press, 22 October 2003 Sunday Times, 19 December 2004 Daily Times (Pakistan), 21 December 2004 Newsline (Pakistan), April 2005 Agence France Presse, 1 June 2005 Outlook India, 8 May 2006 London Times, 26 September 2006 London Times, 27 September 2006 CBS News, 27 September 2006 The Australian, 28 September 2006 Times Of India, 28 September 2006 Associated Press, 27 September 2006 Salon.com, 27 September 2006 Aljazeera, 28 September 2006 Associated Press, 28 September 2006 Associated Press, 29 September 2006 Sunday Times, 1 October 2006 Local London, 9 October 2006 Toledo Blade, 9 October 2006 New York Sun, 10 October 2006 Asian Image, 10 October 2006 TIME, 12 October 2006 Times of India, 13 October 2006 Gulf Times, 15 October 2006 McClatchy Newspapers, 13 October 2006 BBC Online, 11 December 2006 London Times, 15 March 2007 Independent, 5 April 2007 Los Angeles Times, 17 June 2007 New York Times, 12 February 2016 Or Was It Someone Else? TotallyJewish.com, 11 October 2007 Sheikh And 7/7 London Bombings Independent, 12 July 2005 Mirror, 19 July 2005 Daily News & Analysis (India), 29 June 2006 Rediff (India), 12 August 2006 United Press International, 14 August 2006 Middle East Times, 4 October 2006 Daily Times (Pakistan), 12 November 2006 Sheikh And Aircraft Bomb Plot August 2006 Rediff (India), 12 August 2006 United Press International, 14 August 2006 Daily News & Analysis (India), 19 August 2006 Reports On Sheikh From His Home Town Newspaper In The UK Redbridge Guardian - Wanstead and Woodford Section - various articles - click here Alternative Media Reports On Sheikh And Related Areas Sept. 11's Smoking Gun - The Many Faces of Saeed Sheikh More References On Omar Sheikh And Pakistan's ISI 9/11 'Complete Timeline' Entries Saeed Sheikh Pakistani ISI Mahmood Ahmed Mariane Pearl's And Asra Nomani's Search For The Truth "In January 2002, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl thought he was headed for a routine interview in Karachi, Pakistan. But that interview was to be his last. A month later, the FBI received a video showing his gruesome death. It ended with Pearl’s killer holding his decapitated head. By now, many people know the story of Daniel Pearl. Some have seen the grainy video of his demise. But to Asra Nomani, he was 'Danny' and a colleague, close friend, and partner on the volleyball court. Nomani has just published a long narrative in The Washingtonian about trying to solve the mystery surrounding his death — a search that has consumed her since the night he disappeared. 'That summer, four men were convicted in Danny’s kidnapping and murder, but what I realized over the years was there were many other men who were suspected of being involved,' she says. Nomani went on to co-found the Pearl Project at Georgetown University in 2007, with the goal of getting to the bottom of who was responsible for his kidnapping and death, as well as finishing the final story Pearl was reporting when he vanished. 'I wanted to find the truth that was left behind,' she said. 'When Danny wasn’t brought back, there was the sadness that we had — sort of like Marines feel, I think, where you never want to leave your buddy behind. We couldn’t save his life, but as journalists, we’re trying to find the truth of the most horrific [tragedy] in this world. And that’s what I had to find out for myself.' Ultimately, the FBI provided a dramatic clue: a much clearer version of the video showing Pearl’s murder. It held a detail that Nomani believed was key. 'This idea that the hand of the man who held the knife that killed Danny had distinguishable vein patterns — and those same vein patterns had been noticed on the hand of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man who had confessed to committing the 9/11 attacks,' she said. In fact, in March 2007, the US government released a transcript of a Guantánamo hearing in which Khalid Sheikh Mohammed admits to killing Pearl. 'I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan,' he reportedly said. 'For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the internet holding his head.' He was not alone, though. The Pearl project has documented [pdf] roughly a dozen people it says were connected to Pearl's kidnapping and murder who remain free. Looking for closure, Nomani traveled in 2012 to Guantánamo, where a military commission was set to arraign Mohammed and four other men for the World Trade Center attacks. She recalled watching the court proceeding, but not being able to look at Mohammed’s right hand. 'For many many hours, I kept looking at his face, at his mouth moving,' she said. 'Slowly the camera would focus and I kept wishing for it to focus clearer and clearer. Finally, I saw his hand. I believe it is the same hand I saw in the murder video. This is not the kind of evidence that would convict a defendant in court, but in my heart, this is what I saw.' Despite Mohammed’s confession, charges related to Pearl’s death are not likely to play a part in the government’s case. The 9/11 court proceedings are expected to take years. But Nomani said she hopes information about Pearl’s murder can be presented at sentencing, if nothing else, as a testament to Mohammed’s character." A colleague and friend works to finish slain journalist Daniel Pearl's story Public Radio International, 26 January 2014 The Washingtonian, January 2014 Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, April 2011 The Cutting Edge News, 25 April 2011 CNN, 20 January 2011 Washington Post, 20 January 2011 Wall St Journal, 20 January 2011 Forward, 12 August 2009 Wall St Journal, 18 December 2008 Washington Post, 18 December 2008 Associated Press, 19 July 2007 Little India, 2 July 2007 Foreign Policy, May 2007 Guardian, Comment Is Free, 21 May 2007 USA Today, 9 May 2007 Sheikh Has Been Tried Neither For The Murder Of Daniel Pearl Nor For Involvement In 9/11 The Pearl Project - The Truth Left Behind Center for Public Inegrity, 2011 "The kidnapping and murder of [Wall St Journal reporter] Daniel Pearl was a multifaceted, at times chaotic conspiracy. The Pearl Project has identified 27 men who played a part in the events surrounding the case. Members of at least three different militant groups took part in the crimes, including a team of kidnappers led by British-Pakistani Omar Sheikh and a team of killers led by Al Qaeda strategist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is known as KSM... False and contradictory evidence presented in Pakistan’s kidnapping trial raises serious doubts the convictions of Sheikh and his three associates will stand up in currently pending appeals. Omar Sheikh’s defense attorney is also using KSM’s confession as grounds for his appeal. KSM told the FBI that he was pulled into the kidnapping by a high-level leader in Al Qaeda circles today, an Egyptian named Saif al-Adel, who told him to make the kidnapping an Al Qaeda operation. Pearl’s actual murderers will likely not stand trial for their crime. Federal officials decided in the summer of 2006 not to add the Pearl murder to charges against KSM in military tribunals because they concluded that would complicate plans to prosecute him and four alleged accomplices in the 9/11 attacks. KSM’s suspected accomplices aren’t expected to be charged, either. One nephew is being tried for the 9/11 attacks, and the whereabouts of the older nephew aren’t publicly known.... The failure to indict KSM appears due, in part, to the fact that he first confessed to U.S. officials in the midst of tactics known as 'waterboarding,' according to sources close to the interrogation. The harsh techniques, which human rights activists describe as torture, would likely derail any prosecution in the United States.... Among the Pearl Project’s findings are that Pakistani and American authorities missed key opportunities to develop witnesses and forensic evidence that might earlier have led to KSM, his two alleged accomplices in the murder, and many others who allegedly had roles in the kidnapping. In all, the project identified 27 men who were involved in events surrounding Pearl’s kidnapping and murder. Fourteen of the men are free. While some of these men’s names have floated around with aliases, signified by the '@' sign in Pakistan police reports, the Pearl Project established their real identities, identifying home addresses and family members. In some cases, there are alternate spellings to their Arabic and Urdu names. 'Justice wasn’t served,' Pearl’s mother, Ruth Pearl, told the Pearl Project.... The murder was the first known operation in which Pakistani militants collaborated with Al Qaeda.... ... [Jameel] Yusuf, then-chief of the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee, a group formed in 1989 after a wave of kidnappings hit Karachi, was involved trying to find Pearl. Reform continues to be badly needed, Yusuf told the Pearl Project. But he said, 'Sadly, this has not been effectively and beneficially liaisoned by the U.S. government with their Pakistani counterpart.' Thus, he said, for example, the Pearl case has seen ad hoc justice with suspected co-conspirators never prosecuted. 'As regards the suspects never charged,' he said, 'I am sure they have been bumped off so as not to compromise the proceedings and judgments earlier given by the courts.' Indeed, in a report released in December 2010, the U.S. State Department said that extrajudicial killings are a problem in Pakistan. Pearl’s story demonstrates the risks that journalists face in doing the vital work of reporting on terrorism, delving into a radical culture in which their crucial independent role provides little, if any, protection.... ....The men in the Pearl plot were mostly born in the 1960s and 1970s and many had roots in the northeast Punjab province heartland where radicalism is fostered by an austere interpretation of Sunni Islam called Deobandism. In 1977, during their formative years, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq took over Pakistan, leading a strict Islamist movement, funded in part by the government of Saudi Arabia, exporting its rigid Wahhabi ideology to the world to counter the 1979 Iranian Shia revolution. The men came of age in the 1980s just as Afghan fighters, fueled by their Islamic fervor and covert aid from Pakistan and the United States, were defeating the mighty Soviet military. After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, an alphabet soup of Pakistani militant groups with acronyms such as HUM (Harkat ul-Mujahideen), LeJ (Lashkar-e-Jhangvi), JeM (Jaish-e-Mohammed), SSP (Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan), HUI (Harkat-ul-Islamiya), and LeT (Lashkar-e-Taiba) took off in the Pakistani province of Punjab, fueled by the Islamist transformation of Pakistan. One of these groups, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, later became closely linked to the Pearl case and is part of a loose collection of militant groups dubbed the Punjabi Taliban. Many of the young men involved in the Pearl case joined these groups and trained at Afghanistan-Pakistan border camps tied to Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate [ISI], and were drawn to the radical views of the Taliban fighters who subsequently took control of Afghanistan. Now in their 20s and 30s, they were eager foot soldiers in what some regarded as a growing industry, Jihad Inc., many of them living in the same dicey Karachi neighborhood of Nazimabad and listening to sermons from radicalized imams at neighborhood mosques.... These young men were prime candidates to be subcontractors in Omar Sheikh’s dark scheme. He had met Pearl two weeks earlier in a hotel in Rawalpindi, outside Islamabad, pretending to be a disciple of a Pakistani religious leader, Sheik Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani. Pearl wanted to interview Gilani, chasing a Boston Globe story that claimed Gilani had ties to 'shoe bomber' Richard Reid. Sheikh set a trap for January 23, when he told Pearl he could have a rare interview with Gilani in Karachi.... ...retired Gen. Ehsanul Haq, the ISI chief at the time, acknowledged in an interview with the Pearl Project is that on February 5, Omar Sheikh gave himself up to Ejaz Shah, the home secretary for the province of Punjab, a retired army brigadier and close ally of then-Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. Sheikh told the FBI he was in Shah’s care for the seven days. Shah had worked as an intelligence officer for the ISI.... Whether Sheikh sought refuge in Shah’s custody because there was a family connection and would, therefore, provide a soft landing into the legal system, or whether it was because Sheikh had a long history with the ISI is still unresolved. This interlude has raised numerous questions. Was the ISI protecting Sheikh? Was it holding him to make sure he wouldn’t spill any of its secrets? Was Omar Sheikh hoping the intelligence service — perhaps the most powerful institution in Pakistan — would provide him some protection? Most provocatively, were elements in the ISI, which have backed the Taliban and Pakistan militant groups, knowledgeable about Omar Sheikh’s kidnapping activities? Even worse, was the ISI involved? Haq denied any ISI involvement in the kidnapping..... Two months after Omar Sheikh and his cohorts were apprehended, the Pakistani system was putting into place all the pieces necessary to try the four men in a court of law. But what followed turned out to be less about meting out justice and more about putting a quick end to this embarrassing incident. The trial was closed to the public.... On July 15, 2002, the judge issued the verdict against Sheikh and his three co-defendants: guilty. The judge found that all four had 'committed murder of Daniel Pearl by slaughtering and caused the evidence of the dead body to disappear.' He sentenced Sheikh to death and his co-defendants to life imprisonment.... If a guilty verdict were the intent, prosecutors had certainly achieved it — and in the face of considerable contradictory evidence. While Sheikh orchestrated the plot to kidnap Pearl and his three co-defendants were guilty of aiding him, none were actually present for the murder. The actual killers were still free in Pakistan... Attorneys for Sheikh and his three co-defendants have filed numerous appeals that have been postponed repeatedly, and people familiar with the case told the Pearl Project that Sheikh, at least, will be freed at some point. Rai Bashir Ahmad, defense attorney for the four men, told the Pearl Project, 'I believe the case will be reversed on appeal, as soon as the appeal shall be heard, because there is absolutely no concrete evidence against the accused.' Al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who said he killed Pearl with his own hands, and one of his two nephews who may have assisted him are incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay; they await trial for their role in 9/11, but not for Pearl’s murder." What Was Daniel Pearl Doing In Pakistan Before He Was Killed? "...while Omar may have been our original target [in our search for Danny], in truth he's just one in a massively complicated chain... ultimately he is a tool. But whose? It's become clear that Omar doesn't know where Danny is. That's never been his role. He was the lure; others are the captors.... who is overseeing it all? Who pulls the strings?..." 'A Mighty Heart' by Mariane Pearl, widow of Daniel Virago Press, 2003 Before 9/11 Former Intelligence Officer Robert Baer Told The CIA That KSM 'Is Going To Hijack Some Plane' And Tipped Daniel Pearl Off After 9/11 That The Journalist Needed To Pursue KSM As The American Goverment Wasn't Interested "Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was investigating the man who allegedly planned the Sept. 11 airplane hijackings and attacks on New York and Washington when he was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan, according to two former Central Intelligence Agency officials. Bob Baer, a former case officer in the agency's Directorate of Operations, said he provided Pearl with unpublished information about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has since been accused by American officials of being one of the masterminds of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and a top aide to Osama bin Laden. Mohammed is currently the operational chief of al Qaida, other U.S. intelligence officials said. Next to bin Laden, Mohammed is one of the most wanted terrorists in the world. 'I was working with Pearl,' said Baer, who has written a book about his time as a CIA official and has acted as a consultant and source for numerous media outlets. 'We had a joint project. Mohammed was the story he was working on, not Richard Reid.'... Shortly after Pearl's kidnapping and subsequent murder in Karachi, Pakistan last winter, it was reported he was tracing the background of Reid, who was seized on a Boston-bound American Airlines jet from Paris allegedly trying to ignite explosive in his shoes. According to that account, [Pearl] had gone to Karachi to contact a man called Sheik Mubarek Gilani to get information on Reid. Baer said that instead Pearl was onto bigger and more dangerous game. 'I urged him to go to Pakistan to look into Shaikh Mohammed.'.... Pakistani intelligence sources told UPI that Mohammed, the man Pearl was actually trying to track down, also had links to Gilani and his party.... On July 15, an anti-terrorism court in the southern Pakistani city of Hyderabad convicted four men for kidnapping and murdering Pearl. The suspected ringleader, British-born Pakistani Ahmad Omar Saeed Shaikh, better known as Shaikh Omar, was sentenced to death while three others were sent to jail for life. Throughout the trial, Omar maintained that -- although he knew how and by who Pearl had been killed -- he was not himself responsible.... According to Baer, he was first informed of Mohammed's role as a key aide to terrorist mastermind bin Laden as early as December 1997 when he met a former police chief from Doha, Qatar, at a dinner in Damascus. In 1997, Baer had left the agency to become a consultant in Beirut. Terrorism was Baer's field and Baer began to meet the ex-Doha police chief from time to time.... The ex-police chief told Baer that Mohammed 'is going to hijack some planes.' The ex-police chief said his basis for this was evidence developed by police and Qatari intelligence.... Baer sent this information to a friend in the CIA Counter-terrorist Center who forwarded the information to his superiors. Baer heard nothing. 'There was no interest,' he said. Baer said he was frustrated and called Pearl.... Baer said to his annoyance, Pearl did not begin to work on the story. Nothing was done until the day of the Sept. 11 attacks when Pearl called to talk to Baer. Baer said he gave Pearl all the old information he had and new information he had since obtained -- for example, that there are files on Mohammed in the Qatari Embassy in London. Baer said he and Pearl then 'began to work together' -- in other words, Pearl would get info and check it out with Baer and Baer would feed Pearl what he was getting. It was 'a joint project,' said Baer. Baer was giving direction, but Pearl's contacts were not confined to Baer. After Pearl's murder, Baer said, he took his information about Mohammed to the Justice Department, but again, as with the agency, he never received a call nor did the department express any interest." UPI Exclusive: Pearl tracked al Qaida United Press International, 30 September 2002 (Mirrored copy - click here) "Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was investigating the man who allegedly planned the Sept. 11 airplane hijackings and attacks on New York and Washington when he was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan, according to two former Central Intelligence Agency officials. Bob Baer, a former case officer in the agency's Directorate of Operations, said he provided Pearl with unpublished information about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has since been accused by American officials of being one of the masterminds of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks .... Shortly after Pearl's kidnapping and subsequent murder in Karachi, Pakistan last winter, it was reported he was tracing the background of Reid, who was seized on a Boston-bound American Airlines jet from Paris allegedly trying to ignite explosive in his shoes. According to that account, Reid had gone to Karachi to contact a man called Sheik Mubarek Gilani to get information on Reid. Baer said that instead Pearl was onto bigger and more dangerous game. 'I urged him to go to Pakistan to look into Shaikh Mohammed.' Another former 30-year veteran of CIA confirmed Baer's account. He asked that his name not be used, but he endorsed Baer: 'I'm surprised Baer is on the record, but he really knows his stuff on this.' Baer said that he believes it was Mohammed who had Pearl killed. 'I have heard from (intelligence) people who follow this closely that it was people close to Mohammad that killed him, if it wasn't Mohammed himself,' he said....The director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, Josef Bodansky, told UPI emphatically, 'Mohammed was Pearl's killer. An Algerian actually did the job, but Mohammed gave the order for the killing. There's no question about it,' he said. Bodansky said Mohammed also has ties to Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence agency, which he said had acted to shield him in the past. 'Mohammed was running operations right in Karachi,' said Bodansky." UPI Exclusive: Pearl tracked al Qaida United Press International, 30 September 2002 (Mirrored copy - click here) Further News Updates On Omar Sheikh Saga Since August 2008 Will Omar Sheikh Ever Face Trial For His Reported Role In 9/11? "The man convicted of kidnapping and murdering American journalist Daniel Pearl in Karachi, Omar Sheikh, has filed an appeal against his death sentence in Sindh High Court. Others sentenced to life imprisonment have also filed appeals. The Sindh High Court has issued notice to the prosecutor general for March 3 and has given orders to allow Omar Sheikh to meet his lawyers. Daniel Pearl was the South Asian bureau chief at the Wall Street Journal. He was kidnapped in Karachi in 2002. A few weeks later his decomposed body was found. After the incident, Omar Sheikh was sentenced to death while three others were given life imprisonment." Daniel Pearl’s convicted murderer files appeal against death sentence Daily Times, 27 January 2017 "A Sindh High Court (SHC) judge declined on Tuesday to hear the appeal of murder convict Omer Saeed Sheikh, who was sentenced to death for killing American journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002.A two-judge anti-terrorism appellate bench referred the matter to the SHC chief justice to constitute a new bench, after one of the two judges, Justice Naimatullah Phulpoto, excused himself from hearing the matter. Sheikh, the main convict, has challenged the death sentence awarded to him by the anti-terrorism court (ATC)." Daniel Pearl case: SHC judge declines to hear Omar Saeed Sheikh’s appeal Express Tribune, 27 April 2016 "The Pakistani military said on Friday that it had foiled an attempt to free Ahmed Omar Sheikh, the British-born militant who was convicted and sentenced to death for his role in the 2002 killing of the American journalist Daniel Pearl. Lt. Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa, the military’s chief spokesman, said militants had planned to break into a prison in Hyderabad, a city in Sindh Province in Pakistan’s south, to free Mr. Sheikh and other prisoners being held there. General Bajwa spoke at a news conference in the port city of Karachi, about 100 miles southwest of Hyderabad. Mr. Pearl, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, was working on an article on militant Islamic groups in Pakistan with links to Al Qaeda when he was kidnapped, and subsequently beheaded, in Karachi. Mr. Sheikh was found to have masterminded the journalist’s abduction. General Bajwa said the prison break plan was 90 percent complete when intelligence agencies broke it up. He said the plotters had rented a house in Hyderabad and planned to breach the prison with the help of a jail constable, who has been arrested. At the news conference, General Bajwa presented a handmade map of the prison, which he said the plotters had drawn with the constable’s help." Pakistan Says It Foiled Plot to Free Militant Behind Daniel Pearl’s Death New York Times, 12 February 2016 "Part of funding for 9/11 attacks in the US had originated from India, according to a former top police officer Neeraj Kumar, who has based his claim on the 'revelation' made by a terrorist. Kumar, who served in CBI and retired as Delhi Police commissioner two years back, said the funds were raised from a kidnapping and handed over to the chief of the 9/11 attackers Mohammad Atta by terrorist Omar Sheikh who was released by India in exchange of hijacked Indian Airlines plane in 1999. Sheikh was given the money by terrorist Aftab Ansari, who was responsible for the attack on the American Center in Kolkata, says the 1976-batch IPS officer citing information obtained from Harkat-ul Mujahideen terrorist Asif Raza Khan. Asif Raza said his 'boss Aftab Ansari had shared the ransom money collected in the kidnapping of Partha Pratim Roy Burman, chairman-cum-managing director of Khadim Shoes with Omar Sheikh,' according to Kumar. Ansari is awaiting hanging in a West Bengal jail for the American Center attack. 'Part of the ransom money received in the Burman kidnapping — about USD 100,000 (at the time Rs 49 lakh)— had later found its way from Omar Sheikh to Mohammad Atta, the chief of the 9/11 attackers,' the book says. Kumar, who is at present heading the anti-corruption wing of BCCI, said the revelation of Asif Raza Khan that ransom money was passed on to Mohammed Atta was mentioned in the testimony of John S Pistole, deputy assistant director, counter-terrorism division of FBI before the Senate Committee on Terrorist Financing in July 2003 at Washington." Part of funding for 9/11 came from India, former Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar says Times of India, 17 November 2015 "A former Forest School pupil in prison in Pakistan for murdering an American journalist has tried to commit suicide, according to reports. Omar Saeed Sheikh was convicted in 2002 of the murder of Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and beheaded in Karachi. Sheikh, 38, who has dual British and Pakistani citizenship, is said to have attempted to hang himself in prison, according to the AFP news agency... Forest School is a private school on the border of Walthamstow and Snaresbrook." Omar Saeed Sheikh was convicted of murdering American journalist Daniel Pearl East London and West Essex Guardian, 20 February 2014 "Omar Saeed Sheikh, the terrorist freed by India in exchange for the hostages of a hijacked plane in 2000, has attempted suicide in a Pakistani jail, an official said on Saturday. The British-Pakistani national, sentenced to death for killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, attempted to take his life in Hyderabad central jail in Sindh province on Wednesday night, senior prison official Akram Naeem said. Sheikh, 41, was stopped in time by jail officials when he tried to hang himself inside his cell, Naeem said. 'He is kept in a separate cell and section of the jail as he is no ordinary criminal,' he said. Sheikh was freed along with Maulana Masood Azhar and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar by India on January 1, 2000 in exchange for the hostages of the hijacked Indian Airlines flight. He was convicted and sentenced to death by an anti- terrorism court in Karachi after he was found guilty of planning and killing Pearl. Pearl, who was working on a story on al-Qaeda in 2002, was kidnapped and beheaded by Sheikh and three others in Karachi. Intelligence agencies had arrested Sheikh in February, 2002 from Lahore soon after Pearl's killing..... Sheikh's lawyer has said that they are waiting for the court to hear their appeal against the death sentence on the ground that the self proclaimed 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, had admitted to killing Pearl. Another jail official said that Sheikh was kept in solitary confinement after the Mumbai 2008 terror attacks. 'After the incident of the hoax calls he made to then President Asif Ali Zardari pretending to be the Indian foreign minister he was kept in solitary confinement and is allowed into the courtyard outside his cell under guard for a short time everyday,' he said. He said Sheikh had brainwashed some guards on duty and other prisoners had complained about his dangerous nature. 'He is a very intelligent, strong and sharp criminal with dangerous designs. So his attempt to commit suicide comes as a surprise,' the official said. The Dawn newspaper had confirmed the story that Sheikh had made the hoax calls after the Mumbai terror attacks using a phone smuggled into his cell and with British SIM card." Omar Sheikh attempts suicide in Pak jail Press Trust of India, 16 February 2014 "A British-Pakistani man convicted of the killing of US reporter Daniel Pearl has attempted to commit suicide in a Pakistani prison, an official said Saturday. 'Omar Sheikh, a British-Pakistani, who is serving life imprisonment in Hyderabad prison, tried to hang himself with the exhaust of the prison cell late Friday," senior police official Akram Naeem told AFP.... In January 2011, a report released by the Pearl project at Georgetown university following an investigation into his death made chilling revelations when it claimed that the wrong men were convicted for Pearl's murder. The investigation, led by Pearl's friend and former Wall Street Journal colleague Asra Nomani and a Georgetown University professor, claimed the reporter was murdered by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the alleged brains behind the September 11 2001 attacks, not Omar Sheikh. Pearl's body was found four months after he disappeared, cut into a dozen pieces, the head severed, the upper torso still clad in a light blue track suit that his kidnappers made him wear, the report said. Self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and is being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, awaiting trial by a US military tribunal." Pakistani Convicted of Killing Daniel Pearl Attempts Suicide Agence France Presse, 15 February 2014 "As the 12th death anniversary of American journalist Daniel Pearl draws near, the anti-terrorism appellate court moved only an inch ahead with the four convicts’ appeals against death and life imprisonment and confirmation of the sentences by the high court. Ahmed Omer Saeed Sheikh, a British national of Pakistani decent, was awarded death sentence while the co-accused – Salman Saqib, Fahad Naseem and Shaikh Adil – were given life imprisonment after the Anti-Terrorism Court found them guilty of beheading the foreign journalist in Karachi on January 23, 2002. Pearl was abducted while investigating a story in Karachi about militants and the ‘Shoe Bomber’ Richard Reid. The trial court judge had sent a reference to the high court for confirmation of sentences awarded to the defendants, who also exercised their right to appeal, and pleaded innocent. A Lahore-based senior lawyer, Rai Bashir Ahmed, is representing Sheikh. When the two judges took up the rusting files of appeals this week, they were irked with the absence of the appellants’ lawyers. The bench issued a notice to the appellants to ensure presence of their lawyers by the next date of hearing. 'Otherwise, the court would provide lawyers at the state’s expense to proceed and decide the matter,' remarked head of the bench, Justice Sajjad Ali Shah. The bench further ordered the prison superintendent, where the four appellants have been kept since their conviction, to ensure notices are served [to the convicts] personally and submit a progress report by the next date of hearing. Pearl’s is said to be the only murder case of journalists in which the culprits were arrested and sentenced. A report by the United States, however, later claimed that those convicted were not the actual killers, and rather the facilitators. On the other hand, the trial is still under way as the scope has been widened with the arrest of another suspect, Hashim Shah, in 2010. Later, the authorities claimed to have arrested another facilitator, Qari Abdul Hayee." Daniel Pearl’s murder: 12 years on, appellate court moves only an inch ahead Express Tribune (Pakistan), 24 January 2014 Omar Sheikh And The ISI "An anti-terrorist judge in France has thrown weight behind claims that the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl and the bombing of French engineers in Karachi both had their roots in murky arms deals with Pakistani officials. In 2002, two brutal terrorist attacks targeting westerners in the Pakistani city of Karachi shocked the world. In January that year, the American journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped before being beheaded in cold blood by his captors. A video was later released showing his execution. Three months later, on May 8, a bomber targeted a bus carrying French naval engineers working for the majority state owned Direction of Naval Construction (DCN). The blast left 11 engineers dead. Apart from being carried out in the same city, the two attacks appeared at first to have little in common. On Monday, Judge Marc Trevidic, who is charged with investigating the bomb attack on the French engineers, met with the families of the 11 victims in Paris. Trevidic told them of his latest findings, which support a theory first put forward in a 2008 internal report by DCN titled ‘Nautilus’ that suggested both attacks were linked to a breakdown in arms deals with Pakistan. 'It was a rumour, now it has become a certainty' wrote French daily Le Parisien, which broke the story of Trevidic’s findings on Monday. The implication of Pakistan’s secret services (ISI) in both cases is 'no longer in doubt' added Le Parisien....The killing of the French engineers, who were working on a submarine construction project, sparked outrage in France. Pakistani police immediately placed the blame at the door of Islamic fundamentalists, but the radicals initially condemned to death for the attack were found not guilty on appeal. Nevertheless, Jean-Louis Brugière, the French judge in charge of the case at the time, continued to pursue the line that Islamic radicals were to blame. But when Trevidic took over the case in 2007, he began examining the theory that the bombing was linked to deals Pakistan made with France to purchase submarines. Trevidic investigated whether the attack was revenge by Pakistani officials who were angry that then-president Jacques Chirac blocked the payment of kickbacks linked to the deal.... The murder of Daniel Pearl, just three months before the bus bombing, was also initially attributed to Islamic fundamentalists linked to al Qaeda. But one of the demands made by his kidnappers after his abduction also pointed to a possible ulterior motive. In two emails sent just after his kidnapping, his captors listed a number of conditions for the release of their hostage, one of which was for the United States to deliver the F-16 fighter jets that Pakistan had paid for but never received due to a diplomatic wrangle. During his trip to the United States in February, Trevidic requested access to past hearings of Sheikh Omar, the British-born militant of Pakistani descent who was considered to be the mastermind behind Pearl’s murder and is currently in prison in Pakistan. The evidence subsequently confirmed the emails' authenticity. 'The two authenticated emails indicate that it was not al Qaeda behind the kidnapping, but Pakistani nationals, because of the F-16 deal,' Marie Dose, lawyer for the families told AFP news agency." Karachi bombings linked with Daniel Pearl murder France 24, 27 June 2012 "On Thursday, October 16, 2003, a warm and slightly overcast day in Washington, D.C., White House National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice called Daniel Pearl’s widow, Mariane, with some startling information. It was their first conversation ever, and Mariane was caught off guard. In a cool voice, Rice delivered blockbuster news that would tie the Pearl abduction-murder to the horrors of the 9/11 attacks that preceded it. 'We have now established enough links and credible evidence to think that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was involved in your husband’s murder,' Rice said. KSM, as he was called, was the alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. 'What do you mean ‘involved?’' Mariane Pearl asked. Since the earliest days of discovering that her husband had been murdered, she had suspected Al Qaeda’s involvement. She had never been satisfied with the July 2002 convictions of Omar Sheikh and three co-defendants as closing the case. 'We think he committed the actual murder,' Rice responded. Rice doled out her information selectively. She didn’t tell Mariane Pearl how officials had reached that conclusion or what evidence they had to back it up. She did not offer any proof that KSM was the killer, nor identify his accomplices in the murder. Most significantly, Rice didn’t let on to what was then one of the Bush administration’s most closely-held secrets—that KSM was being held in a secret CIA prison and had been subjected to waterboarding and other hard-core interrogation techniques. Those facts would turn out to have major consequences. They both raised questions about the reliability of KSM’s confession and created a major obstacle to ever trying him in a U.S. criminal court for Pearl’s murder. Rice made a similar call to The Wall Street Journal’s managing editor Paul Steiger, who in turn called John Bussey, the paper’s foreign editor, to discuss running a story. There was no question in their minds that this was an important development in the investigation of the murder of their colleague. And Rice had not specifically requested that the conversation be considered off the record, that is, not usable for publication. The editors decided to run a story in the newspaper’s Monday edition. Bussey passed the assignment to Steve LeVine, who had known Pearl and worked with him in Pakistan. On Friday, the day after Rice called Mariane, Frederick Jones II, deputy press secretary at the National Security Council, called back after learning that The Wall Street Journal was preparing a news story. According to the widow, he expressed outrage. 'We’re angry that the Wall Street Journal is doing a story. We called The Wall Street Journal as Danny’s employer,' Jones told Mariane. Jones later told the Pearl Project that he could not recall details about the phone call, but he said Rice would have made the call to Steiger assuming it would be off the record, not to be published, since the Pearl investigation was ongoing. The Wall Street Journal had spoken to U.S. officials during the investigation to find Pearl with those ground rules. Rice 'would have called Steiger as someone who had been involved in the story and [as] this gentleman’s employer,' Jones said. 'We do a lot of things as humans and as people. Daniel Pearl was another American citizen that people cared about.' In response to the National Security Council’s concerns, the editors agreed to cite Rice anonymously as a 'government official' in the article. That gave Rice some deniability and made it harder for other reporters to advance the story, which might have led them in the direction of the CIA’s secret activities. Renditions, secret prisons, and 'black sites' weren’t yet part of the post-9/11 lexicon. Journalists would only soon start writing about secret detentions. Despite the certainty expressed by Rice, KSM’s culpability was not a sure thing to everyone. His possible role had surfaced in a January 26, 2003, Time magazine story when reporters identified KSM as the man wielding the knife, citing Pakistani police interrogation of a guard, Fazal Karim. Still, could the confession of a top terrorist be believed or was he just eager to boost his own importance by claiming responsibility for a string of high-profile terrorist acts? Further, there was the issue of whether a confession extracted from waterboarding was reliable. Experts say that someone subject to torture will say anything to make it stop. FBI agent Michael Dick, one of the agents sent to Pakistan immediately after Pearl’s abduction, still was looking for some confirmation in early 2004, some four months after the Journal’s story on KSM. He knew that the alleged 9/11 mastermind was in secret custody. He wasn’t privy to the interrogation tactics used against KSM. Dick edited the Pearl murder video to create still photos of frames of the video that showed the hand of the masked killer. His idea was to see if the beefy right hand matched KSM’s. He turned to a CIA officer assigned to the FBI as a liaison officer. Dick asked him: Could he send the still to his CIA colleagues holding KSM? The liaison officer agreed to the request. A response soon arrived: 'The photo you sent me and the hand of our friend inside the cage seem identical to me.' The distinguishable feature: the bulging vein that ran across the murderer’s hand. Vascular technology, or 'vein-matching,' is a forensics technology that has not been widely tested. It’s popular among some forensics experts, but is not as reliable as other biometrics techniques such as fingerprints. However, the CIA and FBI sometimes use this type of technology in order to identify suspects. By extracting the information of the vascular structure of a hand or finger and converting it into a mathematical quantity, this technology creates a template for each structure and then compares the template of a known individual to a suspect. The FBI agent was ecstatic. This was informal confirmation, and now he wanted to go through channels to get official documentation to add to the evidence against KSM. He asked Jay Kanetkar, the FBI case agent on the Pearl case, to send a forensic scientist to KSM to confirm the match. Eager to get the evidence, Dick went to the acting chief in his unit, Ed Dickson. 'Let sleeping dogs lie,' Dickson responded, according to people familiar with the conversation. The agent protested. Dickson reiterated his point: 'Don't mess with the case.' The caution reflected two concerns: keeping distance from CIA activities and upsetting the Omar Sheikh convictions by bringing in a suspect who actually wielded the murder weapon. The agent walked away, frustrated....In October 2007, at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, KSM had visitors. One he knew: FBI agent Frank Pellegrino, who had pursued him since the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. He had interviewed him earlier in the year about 9/11. With him was an FBI analyst and another agent, John Mulligan, who had jetted to Karachi in the days after Pearl’s kidnapping. 'No one’s happy with the resolution of the Daniel Pearl case,' said an FBI agent. 'If he did it, we want him prosecuted.' Pellegrino explained Mulligan was there to ask about the Pearl murder. First, the men took photos of KSM’s hands in various positions. 'I know what you’re doing,' Mohammed said at one point, repeating what he had supposedly said in CIA custody. What they were doing was very simple: They wanted their own confirmation that KSM’s hand matched that of the man who killed Pearl. Mulligan left the interview convinced KSM was the murderer. Pellegrino wasn’t sure. It had been a year and two months between Pearl’s murder and KSM’s arrest. He could have learned details of the murder from other folks. But he had started the interview not believing it was possible. After the interview, he sat on the fence. Back in the office, Pellegrino looked at the images of KSM’s hand and the killer’s hand. It was enough of a match that he couldn’t rule KSM out. In Pakistan, the news of KSM’s confession was music to the ears of Rai Bashir Ahmad, the grizzled defense attorney that Omar Sheikh had hired to defend him in the 2002 case that sentenced him to death for Pearl’s kidnapping and murder. Bashir said he would file a new appeal that rested on one new fact: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s confession. It would join a long list of appeals, citing errors including contradictions in the evidence introduced in trial." Asra Q. Nomani, Barbara Feinman Todd, Kira Zalan, Rebecca Tapscott, Bonnie Rollins, Karina Hurley, and Dmitri Ivashchenko The Edge of Terrorism - The Truth Left Behind: Letting Sleeping Dogs Lie The Cutting Edge News, 25 April 2011 "According to around 800 secret files released this week by WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website, Rabbani had been in detention at the Guantanamo Bay camp since Sept 19, 2004, — two years after his arrest in Karachi. He continues to be under detention as US officials consider him to be a high risk detainee. The Wikileaks files contain secret US documents about detainees from various countries at Guantanamo Bay — from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan and from Palestine to Kenya. The highest number of detainees are from Afghanistan. The files include reports on interrogation of 69 Pakistani detainees, some of whom were assessed to have no links with Al Qaida or Taliban and were recommended for release. However, it is not clear whether they have been released or not. In some cases, an earlier recommendation about release of a detainee was reversed, indicating that the recommendation had not been implemented. The interrogation report about Rabbani is ostensibly based on the detainee’s own account 'These statements are included [in the report] without consideration of veracity, accuracy or reliability,' the report prepared on June 9, 2008, said. Rabbani, according to the report, admitted that he was an Al Qaeda facilitator from early 2002 to Sept 2002. During this period he managed a number of safe houses in Karachi and had direct to many senior Al Qaeda members, including Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al Zawahiri and others. These safe houses provided logistical support to most of the Sept 11, 2001, hijackers, the investigation report said. He was directly involved with terrorist plans and operations. In late 1998 or 1999, Rabbani’s brother, Ahmad Ghulam Rabbani, who is also detained in Guantanamo Bay, allegedly recruited him for extremist activities. He travelled to Afghanistan to receive training in the use of firearms with an intent to fight in Myanmar. Rabbani travelled from Karachi to Khost, Afghanistan, attending a training centre _ the Khaldan training camp. Here he received training in the use of different weapons, including the AK-47 assault rifle, PK machinegun, mortars, and rocket propelled grenades (RPGS), but was expelled after three months for smoking. After staying in Bagram (Afghanistan) for three months, Rabbani returned to Karachi and was instructed by his brother to go to a hospital on Tariq Road in order to help care for wounded Al Qaeda fighters. Almost one year later, Rabbani met Umar Sheikh. The latter asked him if he had been to Al Qaeda training camps. The detainee replied he had, but was removed for a minor violation. Sheikh was initially sceptical, but later asked Rabbani to work for him as a cook in safe houses in Karachi. In addition to cooking and cleaning, the detainee transported goods to Afghanistan for Al Qaeda personnel. The goods included computers, electronic components and some unspecified unknown items. He was also responsible for renting guesthouses frequented by Al Qaeda operatives and members of their families.... The reason for his continued detention, according to US army officials, was that he had admitted to working directly for for Al Qaeda from early 2000 to Sept 2002. He was alleged to have run several safe houses in Karachi. While working for Khalid Sheikh, he had direct access to a number of senior Al Qaeda members and helped facilitate the movement of most of the Sept 2001 hijackers. He had met Osama bin Laden on numerous occasions, including twice at the Kandahar airport. Osama had been living at the Kandahar airport when Rabbani delivered a number of items sent to him by Khalid Sheikh..... Rabbani reported that Osama’s son, Saed Bin Laden, lived in Karachi with his wife and son, from Jan 2002 through at least June 2002. Sheikh provided a safe haven for Saed in Karachi. While Saed was there, he would occasionally come with Sheikh to one of the detainee’s safe houses at house number D-255, Block 13 D, Gulshan-i-Iqbal. During a raid on the detainee’s safe house on Tariq Road, Pakistani authorities discovered over 20 individually wrapped passports, most of which were valid documents belonging to the wives and children of Osama, stored next to remotely-activated electronic detonators. Al Masri was the military chief of Al Qaida and engineered the attacks on US forces in Somalia in 1993. He was wanted by the US government for the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa. Rabbani admitted he managed the Gulshan-i-Iqbal guesthouse. Other guesthouses were on Tariq Road and in Defence Society. His guesthouses were frequented by a clutch of senior Al Qaeda members, such as Osama’s security chief, Hamza al-Ghamdi; Al Qaeda’s military operations supreme commander Muhammad Salah al-Din Abd al-Halim Zaydan aka (Sayf al-Adil); USS Cole bombing mastermind Abd al-Rahim Hussayn Muhammad al-Nashiri aka (Mullah Bilal), senior al-Qaida operative, Walid Muhammad Salih Bin Attash, aka (Khallad Bin Attash), Ammar al-Baluchi, and Sheikh. According to the report, Rabbani helped facilitate the movement in Pakistan of 17 of the 19 individuals who conducted the Sept 11 attacks. He did not admit having knowledge of their mission, but did admit picking up some of them up at airports, arranging a safe house, and transporting some of them to their next destination. He maintained that all the hijackers were members of Al Qaeda and would not allow him to speak to visitors. He reported many of the hijackers stayed at a safe house in the Rabia City complex, Block 13. Mohammad Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Hani Hanjour, however, stayed at the 'Defence View' safe house." Osama`s son stayed in Karachi: Wikileaks Dawn (Pakistan), 29 April 2011 "Another difference at the Pearl Project model is that the teachers are just as involved in the get-your-hands-dirty reporting as the students. During the Daniel Pearl investigation, Nomani knocked on the door of Omar Sheikh (the mastermind of Pearl’s kidnapping) and questioned his brother at the London home." The Pearl Project: Bringing colleges into the investigative ecosystem Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, April 2011 "A fresh investigation into the January 2002 abduction and subsequent beheading of the American journalist Daniel Pearl has revealed that Sheikh Ahmed Omar Saeed and his three co-accomplices, who had been handed down capital punishment by a Karachi court in July same year, did not commit the murder and were not even present at the crime scene. Sponsored by the Georgetown University, Washington, the findings of the three-and-a-half-year long investigation have concluded that the four militants convicted in the killing, including the prime accused, Sheikh Ahmed Omar Saeed, did help kidnap the journalist but did not kill him. The findings of the investigation report, titled 'The Truth Left Behind: Inside the Kidnapping and Murder of Daniel Pearl,' actually endorse the March 2007 confession of al-Qaeda’s former chief operational commander Khalid Sheikh Mohammad to having slaughtered Pearl. Khalid was arrested from Rawalpindi in March 2003 and handed over to the US..... Shortly after Pearl’s disappearance, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British national of Pakistani origin, and three accomplices were caught, charged, and convicted of murder and kidnapping. However, the findings of the fresh probe have raised questions about Pakistan’s flawed criminal justice system, saying the four men were convicted of the Pearl murder primarily because the Pakistani authorities knowingly relied on perjured testimony and ignored other leads. According to the findings, which have been published by the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity, 'Justice was not served; Leads weren’t followed; suspects weren’t interviewed and alleged co-conspirators weren’t prosecuted. The truth was left behind. Pakistan closed the case. The US let the case go dormant, with one FBI agent told by his boss, 'Let sleeping dogs lie.' The report says 14 of 27 people involved in the abduction and subsequent beheading of Pearl are still at large, five are already dead, four have already been convicted and the remaining four are under detention but have not yet been tried by the Pakistani authorities. The report adds that the four men convicted in the Pearl murder could be released if their appeal is ever heard because of false and contradictory evidence used in the trial. The four convicted men including Sheikh Ahmed Omar Saeed, a London School of Economics’ graduate-turned-Jihadi, and three of his accomplices, Fahad Naseem, Salman Saqib and Sheikh Adeel, were put on trial on April 22, 2002 and were handed down capital punishment almost three months later, in July 2002, after a summary trial by an Anti Terrorism Court. But almost eight-and-a-half years after being sentenced to death, the Pearl killers are lucky enough to have dodged the gallows during all those years, primarily because the Sindh High Court has yet to decide their appeals against the death sentence. Both the defence and the prosecution blame each other for stalling tactics. According to the defence attorney Rai Basheer, the prosecution knows it would lose on appeal and is delaying the process, but prosecutor Raja Qureshi dismissed those claims, saying, 'I challenge the defence to come and attend the case properly and consistently, and they will themselves know whose case is weak'. Yet the fresh findings have strengthened the case of Omar Sheikh and his co-accomplices. For instance, it finds significant discrepancies between the Pakistani police reports as well as in the court testimonies, including that of a taxi driver whose account was considered crucial to the conviction." ‘Daniel Pearl killers’ did not kill him The News (Pakistan), 21 January 2011 "Federal agents have backed up al Qaeda captive Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession in the killing of journalist Daniel Pearl by using photographs of the veins in his hands, according to a new report released Thursday. Mohammed confessed to beheading Pearl after his 2003 arrest in Pakistan. But the U.S. admission that he had been subjected to 'waterboarding' -- a practice historically treated as torture -- while in CIA custody cast doubt on the reliability of his confession, according to a lengthy investigation of the Pearl case by the Center for Public Integrity. According to the report, the FBI and CIA used stills from the video of Pearl's killing to match the patterns of the veins in Mohammed's hand in 2004 and repeated the process in 2007, after Mohammed repeated his confession during a hearing at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. 'Beyond KSM's confession, the U.S. government has never revealed any corroborating evidence,' the report states. But it called the vein match the 'best evidence' the United States has linking Mohammed to Pearl's 2002 slaying. The FBI had no comment on the report that it used vein-matching technology to confirm Mohammed's identity, and said in a written statement that it is not using the technology 'at this time.' Mohammed is accused of planning al Qaeda's September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. According to military prosecutors, he admitted responsibility for the attacks 'from A to Z' during a hearing before a military court at Guantanamo Bay. He has not been charged in Pearl's death, however. According to the report, U.S. officials decided against bringing charges in the Pearl case to avoid complicating Mohammed's prosecution for the 9/11 attacks." Photos of hands backed up Pearl slaying confession, report finds CNN, 20 January 2011 "A recently completed investigation of the killing of Daniel Pearl in Pakistan nine years ago makes public new evidence that a senior al-Qaeda operative executed the Wall Street Journal reporter. Khalid Sheik Mohammed -- the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, who is being held at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- said at a military hearing in 2007 that he killed Pearl. But there have been lingering doubts about his involvement, and the United States has not charged him with the crime. According to the new report, which was prepared by faculty members and students at Georgetown University, U.S. officials have concluded that vascular technology, or vein matching, shows that the hand of the unseen man who killed Pearl on video is that of Mohammed. The report also says Mohammed told the FBI that a senior al-Qaeda operative advised him to take control of Pearl from his original kidnappers. The 31,000-word report, published in conjunction with the Center for Public Integrity at www.publicintegrity.org, is among the most complete and graphic accounts of Pearl's death. The 3 1/2-year investigation, called the Pearl Project, was led by Asra Q. Nomani, a former colleague of Pearl's at the Journal, and Barbara Feinman Todd, director of the journalism program at Georgetown....The report said that 27 men, including guards and drivers, played a part in the kidnapping and murder, and that 14 remain free in Pakistan. Mohammed has not been charged with Pearl's murder, in part because he first confessed while in CIA custody, where he was waterboarded 183 times. Prosecutors fear that his treatment at the hands of the agency could compromise any case, the report said." Khalid Sheik Mohammed killed U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl, report finds Washington Post, 20 January 2011 "A new report on the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl reveals that U.S. officials used a forensic technique called vein analysis to corroborate the confession of the self-professed killer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who also is suspected of planning the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. The report details problems in bringing to justice others suspected of involvement in the crime, including the recent release by Pakistan of a man thought to have been one of the main players....The report shows that, despite the widespread attention his case garnered, the precise story of Mr. Pearl's final days and the exact timing of his death remain shrouded in a fog of conflicting confessions and testimony by alleged perpetrators, their compatriots and Pakistani investigators. By most accounts, Mr. Mohammed wasn't part of the original plan to abduct Mr. Pearl. He told U.S. investigators that he was pulled in later by another senior al Qaeda operative. Mr. Mohammed was asked to take over because the kidnappers—midlevel and low-level Pakistani militants—didn't know what to do with Mr. Pearl." Study Tracks Pearl Murder Probe Wall St Journal, 20 January 2011 "The four men imprisoned for killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl were not present during his beheading but were convicted of murder because Pakistani authorities knowingly relied on perjured testimony and ignored other leads, says a report released Thursday. The results of the Pearl Project, an investigation carried out by a team of American journalists and students and spanning more than three years, raise troubling questions.... The four men convicted in the killing did help kidnap the American journalist, according to the investigation. But it says forensic evidence known as 'vein-matching' bolsters the confession of al-Qaida No. 3 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the professed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, to having killed Pearl. The report says at least 14 of 27 people involved in abducting and murdered Pearl in 2002 are thought to remain free. And the four who have been convicted could be released if their appeal is ever heard because of false and contradictory evidence used in their trial..... Within months of Pearl's disappearance, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British national of Pakistani heritage, and three accomplices were caught, charged, and convicted of murder and kidnapping. Sheikh, called the kidnapping's mastermind, was sentenced to death in July 2002. The three others were given life terms, which in Pakistan usually means 25 years. Since then, the men's appeals have gone nowhere in the courts, despite dozens of hearings. Both the defense and the prosecution blame each other for stalling tactics. And there is constant speculation that Sheikh is being protected, possibly by Pakistani intelligence agencies.... The Pearl Project's findings appear to strengthen the defense's hand. For instance, it finds significant discrepancies between Pakistani police reports and later court testimonies, including that of a taxi driver whose account was considered crucial to the conviction.... The murder case against the four convicts also appears weakened by Mohammed's suspected role. The al-Qaida No. 3 claimed after his capture that he beheaded Pearl. Mohammed is being held at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. military prison, and the confession is believed to have come during interrogation that included waterboarding. But the Pearl Project reports that U.S. investigators also used a technique called 'vein-matching' to compare a photo of Mohammed's hand with a photo of a hand shown on the video of Pearl's killing, and that it's a fit.... Two of Mohammed's nephews may have been present during the killing, according to the report, which cites U.S. and Pakistani officials. One nephew, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, is also at Guantanamo... The report notes that neither Mohammed nor the detained nephew is likely to be charged in Pearl's killing because that could complicate cases against them over the Sept. 11 attacks.... How exactly al-Qaida became involved in the Pearl plot remains a mystery. The report cites Mohammed's interviews with FBI agents, in which he said he was directed to Pearl by another al-Qaida leader, Saif al-Adel. It also says that Pearl's murder was 'the first known operation in which Pakistani militants collaborated with al-Qaida.'... In Pakistan, all parts of the justice system — police, prosecuting agencies, defense lawyers and judges — are riddled with corruption and ineptitude. The conviction rate hovers between 5 and 10 percent, according to a report in December by the International Crisis Group. That report also noted that outsiders, including spy agencies, use intimidation to compromise the justice system. Conspiracy theories have flourished in Pakistan about the relationship Pakistan's main spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, had with Sheikh. As Pakistani officials were searching for him in 2002, Sheikh turned himself in to a former ISI official, Ejaz Shah, at the urging of his father and his uncle. Yet it wasn't until a week later, on February 12, that U.S. officials learned that police had him, the report says. U.S. authorities told the Pearl Project that they have no idea what happened with Sheikh during those seven 'lost days.' 'Whether Sheikh sought refuge in Shah's custody because there was a family connection and would, therefore, provide a soft landing into the legal system, or whether it was because Sheikh had a long history with the ISI is still unresolved,' the Pearl Project's report states. The Pearl Project's sponsors include Georgetown University and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a program at the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C. The lead writer of the report was journalist Asra Q. Nomani, with whom Pearl and his wife were staying in Karachi when he was kidnapped." Investigative report faults Daniel Pearl murder investigation, says many culprits still free Associated Press, 19 January 2011 "For two years, journalism students at Georgetown University worked tirelessly to separate fact from fiction in the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and to finish the story he was pursuing when Pakistani extremists kidnapped and murdered him. The Pearl Project, an in-depth graduate journalism seminar co-directed by former Pearl colleague and friend Asra Nomani, picked up where the reporter left off in 2002, fleshing out Pearl’s exposé of the alleged Pakistani terrorist links to Richard Reid, the British man convicted in 2003 of trying to blow up an airplane by hiding explosives in his shoes. '[Danny’s] work is a window into the murder,' Nomani said. 'The reason why people kill journalists is they don’t want to let them finish their work. We can finish their work and send a really clear message that whatever it is you’re trying to stop will not be stopped.' In July 2002, London-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was sentenced to death by hanging for Pearl’s savage beheading. But Sheikh’s lawyers plan to use the July 2007 confession of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the grounds for an appeal. In July 2007, Mohammed confessed in a closed military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay to personally beheading Pearl, according to The Washington Post. Nomani doesn’t believe that’s the whole story. Part and parcel of the investigation, Nomani said, is reclaiming the man from the myth, extricating Pearl the reporter from Pearl the symbol. 'I hope we can bring Danny to life a little bit in the way journalists work, not in the heroic sense in the way he’s sometimes portrayed, but just as this really dogged reporter who pursued truth and died trying to bring to light truths about our world,' Nomani said. Nomani runs the Georgetown program with Barbara Feinman Todd, associate dean of Georgetown’s master’s degree program in journalism. The two led a course in investigative reporting, guiding a team of 32 students as they followed leads, chased former FBI investigators and obtained faxed documents from Pakistani law-enforcement officials. And now, members of the Pearl Project team, although they will not yet release their results, are confident they’ve put to bed most of the questions they set out to answer. Erin Delmore, who joined the class as a Georgetown senior, said the students 'literally picked up where the FBI left off' in the Pearl murder investigation. 'This is just so far outside the realm of picking up a textbook and getting ready for an essay,' said Delmore, now a reporter with Washingtonian magazine. 'People are skeptical that a group of college kids can solve a murder that took place on the other side of the world.' The class divided itself into beats — Reid’s story or pursuing Pakistani law-enforcement leads, for example — and used a custom-created Web site to track information obtained about the case. Nomani and Todd are now deciding on the best way to present their findings. Options include a book, a graphic novel and a series of traditional news articles." The Pearl Project Picks Up the Story Where the Slain Reporter Left Off Forward, 12 August 2009 "For more than a year, a group of Georgetown University students has been poring over documents, searching for cellphone numbers of suspected terrorists and calling Pakistani police in the middle of the night. Now their class project has come to this: They're suing the CIA and the FBI. The students' assignment was to find out who killed Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and why. Although the class ended last spring and many of the students graduated, they're still trying to write that last paper. Pearl disappeared while reporting in Pakistan in 2002. A video delivered to the FBI showed him being beheaded. Yesterday, the group, known as the Pearl Project and now attached to the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court asking for the release of records by the CIA, FBI, Defense Department and five other federal agencies. Members of the group are seeking, among other things, FBI files on convicted terrorist Richard Reid. Pearl was reporting a story about Reid and his Pakistani handler when he disappeared. They hope the lawsuit will unearth documents or new sources in time for them to finish their final paper late this spring.... In 2002, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was found guilty of planning Pearl's kidnapping and murder and was sentenced to death. Three others were sentenced to life in prison. When the trial began, Pakistani officials said seven other suspects remained at large. At a 2007 hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he is being held, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said he killed Pearl. 'I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan,' he said..... Although Mohammed 'has confessed to the crime, there hasn't been any publicly disclosed corroborating evidence,' Todd wrote in an e-mail. 'One of the goals of the Pearl Project is to establish whether there is any evidence linking . . . Mohammed to the murder. Even if we establish conclusively that he did murder Danny, there were three murderers and we want to establish the identities of the other two.' .... They turned to the Freedom of Information Act, a 1966 law that requires government agencies to disclose requested documents unless they are withheld for reasons that include national security and privacy. But the government can decline to confirm or deny that records exist. Delays are common. The students filed dozens of requests, including one to the FBI for communications and documents related to Mohammed's confession, hoping to find evidence corroborating it. The FBI response, according to the complaint, was that the bureau could not process the request without a signed privacy waiver from Mohammed.... The complaint filed yesterday also names the Defense Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Central Command and the State, Justice and Treasury departments. 'We have been able to establish cells beyond the four men that were convicted, been able to establish the identities of suspects that are walking the streets,' Nomani said. 'I really do believe that we can identify the murderers.'" Reporter's Death Inspires a Seminar and a Lawsuit Wall St Journal, 18 December 2008 "Rashid's indictment of the Bush administration, and his scathing criticism of General Pervez Musharraf, are persuasive. But in making his case, he sometimes reaches too far. He says, for instance, that the White House sought the extradition of Ahmed Omar Sheikh, the convicted murderer of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. 'Pakistan refused,' Rashid writes, disapprovingly. The United States did in fact make a request for his extradition, but it was largely pro forma, I was told later by a senior American official who had been involved in the negotiations. The Bush administration wanted Sheikh tried in Pakistan, the official said, so that he would not have the legal rights he would enjoy in the United States, and so that he could more easily be sentenced to death if convicted. (He was indeed tried and sentenced to death, though the sentence has not yet been carried out.)." Raymond Bonner - Book review: 'Descent Into Chaos,' by Ahmed Rashid New York Times, 5 August 2008 Omar Sheikh, 9/11, MI6, And The Balkans - Click Here US and UK Backed Islamic Terrorism In The Balkans - Click Here