U.S. Seeks Hand-Over of Key Pearl Suspect

U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin appealed to President Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday to hand over the chief suspect in the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

It was not immediately clear how Musharraf responded. Spokesmen for the Pakistani leader and the U.S. Embassy declined to provide details about the meeting. “She brought it up,” embassy spokesman Mark Wentworth said. “I don’t have any details.”

The subject is a sensitive one for Pakistan, at least in part because officials fear that turning over the alleged mastermind of the slaying, Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, could set a precedent for India to demand the extradition of 20 suspected terrorists from Pakistan.

The U.S. and Pakistan have no extradition treaty. Pakistan has indicated that it wants to keep Sheikh in the country to help investigators recover Pearl’s body and the weapons used to kill him.

Pakistani media reports said prosecutors here would seek the death penalty against Sheikh, which would mean he would be hanged. Court cases in Pakistan are tried with a single judge, without a jury, and can be appealed to a higher court as well as the Supreme Court.

If Sheikh is handed over to the U.S., it would probably happen after March 12, when the investigation is closer to completion, foreign diplomatic sources have said. On Monday, a Pakistani judge gave prosecutors two more weeks to build their case against Sheikh, a British-born Muslim militant, and two alleged accomplices.

Pearl disappeared Jan. 23 in Karachi while working on a story about Islamic radicals in Pakistan. A videotape showing his slaying surfaced last week.

Pearl’s slaying isn’t the only crime Sheikh is wanted for in the United States. A federal grand jury indicted him in the 1994 kidnapping in India of four Western tourists, including an American.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Monday that a 1931 extradition treaty between the United States and Britain’s colonial administration in South Asia--which included the region that became India and Pakistan in 1947--should apply.

“Even without this . . . it does not change the United States’ fundamental determination to bring justice” to Pearl’s killers, Fleischer said.

After speaking with Chamberlin, Musharraf called Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to discuss the hand-over request, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

“The Pakistanis are examining our request, and we’ll continue these discussions to make sure the common desire on both sides to see that justice is served is in fact brought to fruition,” Boucher said.