Kidnapped, still

Arrested prime suspect in the case of kidnapped journalist Daniel Pearl has repeatedly confirmed that the American is alive. Absar Alam reports from Karachi
The prime suspect in the Daniel Pearl abduction case was arrested in Lahore, Tuesday. Following interviews with the investigating team, he has admitted to being involved in the plot to abduct Pearl but asserts that he does not know where the journalist is being held.
"Sheikh Omar may be an active member of the team but he was not the captain of the team," a chief investigator was reported saying Tuesday night.
Pearl, the Wall Street Journal correspondent kidnapped on 23 January in Karachi en route to a meeting with a religious cleric was working on a story trying to unearth links between Pakistan's Jihadi groups and shoe-bomber Richard Reid, the British national who attempted to blow up a Paris-to-Miami flight two months ago.
Pearl was trying to meet with Pir Mubarak Shah Gilani -- the chief of a previously unknown religious group, Jamiatul Fuqra. In a bid to meet Gilani, Pearl walked into a trap, possibly laid down by another militant group that is suspected of having links with the Al- Qa'eda network.
The joint investigation team believes that Gilani, who was arrested earlier this month, was not involved in the kidnapping, but that members of another militant group tricked Pearl into believing that they will take him to Gilani. On 23 January, when Pearl left Mariane, his six-month pregnant wife, he told her that he was going to meet Gilani at a meeting arranged by two contacts of his, Bashir and Imtiaz Siddiqui.
The meeting took place in front of the "Village" restaurant in downtown Karachi. Within minutes, Pearl's mobile phone was switched off and, after he had not returned home that night, his wife notified the police and a search was launched. Investigators have since discovered that both Bashir and Imtiaz Siddiqui are fake identities and the mobile phones they were using had been acquired with false identification.
Two days after the kidnapping, the Karachi police received two e-mail messages containing pictures of Pearl. The kidnappers, claiming affiliation to a previously unknown organisation, the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, demanded improved treatment of Pakistani prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, the resumption of a frozen sale of F-16 aircraft to Pakistan and the return of Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan.
Following this, the police received another two e-mails demanding ransom for Pearl's release and, later, claiming that Pearl had been killed and his body dumped in a Karachi graveyard. The investigators tracked down and arrested the senders of these e-mails, which turned out to be pranks.
A "major breakthrough" occurred when investigators tracked down the senders of the first two e-mails and arrested three people: Fawaz Ahmed, Muhammad Salman, and Muhammad Adeel. They confessed to sending the e-mails and to having been asked by Sheikh Ahmed Omar Saeed, a British national, to send them. Using the clues provided by the detainees, Pakistani police and the FBI tracked down Sheikh Omar -- the alleged mastermind behind the Pearl kidnapping. The investigators also claim that Saeed has links with at least one member of Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee's cabinet and two Indian parliamentarians. The allegations have been echoed by Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf who told the Washington Post on the eve of his US visit that India is involved in the kidnapping. India issued a swift rebuttal. Omar, who is suspected of having operated under a fake identity in order to trap Pearl, made calls to New Delhi a day after his gang kidnapped Pearl. His cell phone record reveals that he called officials in New Delhi.
A former student at the prestigious London School of Economics, Omar was one of three persons released from an Indian jail in December 1999 in exchange for the passengers of a hijacked Indian airliner. The other two suspects are the jailed, Maulana Masood Azhar, chief of the banned Jaish-e-Muhammad party, and Mushtaq Zargar. Masood and Omar top the list of 20 persons whose extradition India is demanding.
Sporting a beard, Omar, 28, was a member of the now-banned militant group Harkatul Mujahideen and has been on Interpol's most wanted list. Omar left London to join the mujahideen in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan after watching a documentary on Serb atrocities against Bosnian Muslims. At the time, Indian authorities apprehended Omar while he was entering Indian-controlled Kashmir in an apparent bid to free Maulana Masood Azhar, imprisoned in Jammu's Kot Bhalwal jail. Pakistani authorities are also investigating why Masood, who entered India on a fake journalist identity, was not arrested by Indian authorities on his way from New Delhi to Srinagar. In Srinagar he managed to arrange a meeting with known mujahideen commander Sajjad Afghani. Both were arrested by Indian authorities as they arrived for the meeting. Afghani was later executed but no criminal charges were made against Masood despite his having spent four years in an Indian jail.
Omar later fell out with Masood for unexplained reasons. A few weeks after their release both Masood and Omar slipped into Pakistan where Masood formed Jaish-e- Muhammad. Omar remained a member of Harkatul Mujahideen, which was banned late last year following the attacks on New York and Washington. The key question of why the authorities did not check their activities remains unanswered. Investigators are struggling to find the exact reasons for their fallout.
Masood, Omar and their respective groups have been linked to a large number of regional terrorist acts. From the kidnapping of western tourists and the hijacking of an Indian airliner to the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl and the attacks on the Kashmiri assembly and Indian parliament, the names of Masood and Omar have recurred. The 13 December attack on the Indian Parliament sparked the tense military stand-off between nuclear rivals Pakistan and India.
Interrogations with three arrested suspects by the joint FBI-CID team has led investigators to believe that Omar masterminded the kidnapping. The investigators believed that the three suspects are members of either Harkatul Mujahideen or Jaish-e- Muhammad, both groups banned by General Musharraf. "They fought in Afghanistan and have bullet wound marks on their bodies," sources say.
Pakistani officials believe that the groups were involved in sectarian killings which escalated following the entry of Masood and Omar into Pakistan in late 1999. Several police teams are combing Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Bahawalpur to find Pearl. Investigators have also picked up several other suspects though Omar's apprehension may be the key development in solving the case.
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