Journalist Is Dead, Says Key Suspect in Pakistan

The key suspect in the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl appeared before an anti-terrorism court today and told a judge “as far as I understand, Daniel Pearl is dead.”

Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh was brought into the court in Karachi with a hood over his head. As he was brought before the judge, he removed the hood and said: “I don’t want to fight this case. Whatever I have done, right or wrong, I have my reasons, and I confess.” He then said: “I just want to add something: As far as I understand, Daniel Pearl is dead.”

It was difficult to immediately verify Sheikh’s contentions. Sources in the investigation said he has proved a difficult interrogation and has not given them any accurate information on the whereabouts of Pearl or his body. Several raids based on information provided by Sheikh proved fruitless Wednesday night.

In a strange twist to an already enigmatic case, Sheikh alleged that he has been detained since Feb. 5. Pakistani authorities, however, reported his arrest Tuesday.

Pearl, 38, the Journal’s South Asia bureau chief, disappeared Jan. 23 in Karachi en route to what he believed was an interview with a reclusive Islamic cleric.

Pearl’s abductors sent two e-mail messages to foreign media, which included photographs of Pearl in captivity. They called for the release of Pakistani prisoners of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, and the return of the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, among other demands.

The kidnappers’ second e-mail threatened to execute Pearl within 24 hours and gave American journalists three days to leave Pakistan. However, in recent days Pakistani police and investigators had expressed optimism that Pearl was alive.

On Wednesday, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said after meeting with President Bush in Washington that he was “reasonably sure” that Pearl was still alive and that “we are as close as possible to getting him released.” He did not elaborate.

Musharraf characterized the kidnapping as “fallout” from his crackdown on extremism, but he said he would not be deterred.

Steven Goldstein, spokesman for Dow Jones & Co., the Wall Street Journal’s parent organization, said he had not heard about Sheikh’s statement. “We continue to remain hopeful,” Goldstein said.

Brig. Mukhtar Ahmed, home secretary of Sindh province, where Karachi is located, said: “We don’t think that he’s telling the truth. He could say anything. We are not taking this seriously. He is derailing the investigation. If he knows Daniel Pearl has been killed, he should tell us where the body is. He is a very cunning man and a hardened criminal.”

The judge set a court hearing for Feb. 25 and sent Sheikh back to jail.

Sheikh, 27, a British citizen, was arrested in India in 1994 for kidnapping Western backpackers in Kashmir. The kidnappers demanded the release of Islamic militants fighting Indian rule in the contested Himalayan region. Sheikh was shot and wounded by police and the hostages were freed unharmed.

He spent the next five years in jail, but was never tried. He was freed in December 1999 after gunmen hijacked an Indian Airlines jet to Kandahar, Afghanistan, and demanded the release of Sheikh and two other militants.

Educated at elite British institutions, including the London School of Economics, Sheikh joined the Islamic “holy war” after a summer spent in Bosnia-Herzegovina aiding Muslim war victims.

Sheikh’s apparent confession came just a day after Pakistani investigators said they were shifting their attention away from Sheikh and toward Khalid Khawaja, an aging former Pakistani intelligence official who counts himself a close friend and confidant of Osama bin Laden. Khawaja served as a source for Pearl.

Implicating Khawaja would satisfy those who have divined the secret hand of Pakistan’s murky Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or some rogue element of it, in the Pearl case. The supposed motivation: to display their power despite Musharraf’s crackdown on extremist groups the ISI once aided.

Khawaja was forced out of the ISI and retired from the Pakistani air force in 1988 for challenging former President Zia ul-Haq over his dedication to Islamic causes. He said he worked on the agency’s Afghan operations in the late 1980s, when the U.S. government funneled millions of dollars through the agency to moujahedeen groups battling the Soviet invasion and proxy government in Afghanistan.

Khawaja said he has maintained close contacts with Taliban members and claims that he served as a back-channel link to them between the Sept. 11 attacks and the onset of U.S. bombing in Afghanistan in early October. He showed e-mails that he said prove his case.

But Hamid Gul, a former ISI chief, dismisses the possibility that Khawaja or intelligence agents were involved in the Pearl kidnapping. “Pakistan, ISI and the moujahedeen groups cannot benefit from this kind of a thing,” he said. “I think ISI is being targeted by the Western media.”

‘I Am Not Scared’

Khawaja, a media-savvy small-business man who does research and development for the Pakistani navy, said he is mystified by the focus on him. “They have tried to implicate me with that, but I am open, I am honest, and I am not scared,” he said.

In the days after Pearl disappeared, investigators twice came to the doorstep of Khawaja’s spacious house on the west side of Islamabad, the capital.

Khawaja since has been questioned twice but remains free. He has co-written a plea for Pearl’s release that was published by the Los Angeles Times and has said he found Pearl likable. But he is angry that the U.S. media and Pakistani government make so much of the abduction.

“I have all my sympathy for Daniel Pearl,” he said. “But Pakistanis are all human beings too. Daily, every day, you see people killed and kidnapped all the time, and our government never lifts a finger.”

Khawaja, who spoke with The Times just before authorities arrested Sheikh, said he met with Pearl on Jan. 7 or 8 in Islamabad. Pearl was eager to set up a meeting with a reclusive Islamic cleric with a large following in the U.S. who may have counted suspected “shoe bomber” Richard C. Reid as a disciple.

It was not the first time Pearl had contacted Khawaja. In September, the reporter called looking for contacts in Karachi, he said. “I gave him two, three or four people in Karachi,” Khawaja said. “He was nice. As a person, I liked him a lot.”

None of those contacts, Khawaja insists, are the ones who authorities now believe led Pearl into the hands of kidnappers.

Source Kept in Contact

The two kept in telephone and e-mail contact over the weeks before Pearl disappeared, according to Khawaja. “He would call me and confirm things,” Khawaja said. “We became friendly. And then he disappeared.”

Khawaja said he told Pearl he could not arrange a contact with Sheik Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani, who heads Jamaat ul-Fuqra (Party of the Poor). Gilani also has helped convert hundreds of mainly African American adherents in the U.S., called the Muslims of America, with chapters in New York, Virginia, Colorado and California.

“I told him at this particular time, it would be hard to meet him,” Khawaja said.

But authorities say Pearl made contact with people he thought were Gilani intermediaries through e-mail notes, which they now believe were signed with fake names used by Sheikh, the British citizen who was arrested Tuesday, to lure him into the kidnapping trap.

In the meantime, Gilani has turned himself in to police. He remains in jail, though no charges have been filed.

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Times staff writer Edwin Chen in Washington contributed to this report.