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by Robert Sam Anson
Vanity Fair, August 2002
The reporter who comes to Karachi, Pakistan is given certain cautions.
Do not take a taxi from the airport; arrange for the hotel to send a car
and confirm the driver's identity before getting in.
Do not stay in a room that faces the street.
Do not interview sources over the phone.
Do not discuss subjects such as Islam or the Pakistani nuclear program
in the presence of hotel staff.
Do not leave notes or tape recordings in your room.
Do not discard work papers in the waste basket; flush them down the
toilet.
Do not use public transportation or accept rides from strangers.
Do not go into markets, movie theaters, parks, or crowds.
Do not go anywhere without telling a trustworthy someone the destination
and expected time of return.
And, above all, do not go alone. Ever.
The Marriott in Karachi satisfies
lodging guidelines. Metal detectors flank the entrances, guards with
sawed-off shotguns patrol the premises, and the shopping arcade leads
directly to the U.S. Consulate which seemed a plus until a car bomb
killed 12 people there on June 14. My room, per instruction, is on the
Marriott's backside, and offers a fine view of the nearby Sheraton,
where a bus containing 11 French nationals was blown up by a suicide
bomber in May.
It is also where, according to a
U.S. official, F.B.I. agents recovered a videotape showing an American
journalist having his head cut off. His name was Daniel Pearl, he was 38
years old, a father-to-be, and South Asia bureau chief for The Wall
Street Journal. He got the same security briefing I did.
By now, the horror that befell
Danny Pearl is deeply engraved. A handsome young man, loved by everyone
"Sweetest guy in the world," friends call him goes to a rendezvous he
believes will lead him to a scoop. Instead, terrorists are waiting to
snatch him from the street. They issue photographs of Danny in chains, a
pistol held to his head, and charge that he is a spy and will be
executed unless demands are met. Danny's French wife, Mariane six
months pregnant with their first child appears on television to appeal
for his life. But there is only silence.
Then, just when things are at
their darkest, the terrorist ringleader, a former British public-school
boy named Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, is arrested and says Danny is alive.
Hopes soar as Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, predicts
his imminent freedom. But all that is released is the videotape. "My
father's Jewish, my mother's Jewish, I'm Jewish," it records Daniel
Pearl saying. Then he is butchered.
We've been told that Danny was
not only a great reporter, with an eye for the offbeat and the absurd,
but a cautious one not the sort who'd look for trouble. We've heard
how he grew up in suburban Los Angeles, went to Stanford, and landed at
the Journal, which sent him to Atlanta, Washington, London, Paris, and,
finally, Bombay, a posting he accepted after confirming that there were
venues where Mariane could exercise her passion for salsa dancing. We've
had described how he was skeptical in the best sense of the word,
questioning things taken for granted, unearthing stories others
overlooked.
He was working that way on his
last story, an investigation of the connections between the
"shoe-bomber," Richard C. Reid, and a virulently anti-Semitic Muslim
militant, Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani, tracing an unbeaten path that led to
who knows where.
The who, what, when, and where
have been laid out. Everything except the why. Why did Danny Pearl die?
Because he was a Jew? A journalist? An American? Or was he simply in the
wrong place at the wrong time?
The why is always the hardest
question for a journalist to answer, and it's what brought Danny Pearl
to Pakistan. "I want to know why they hate us so much," he said. Why he
died trying to find out brought me.
My qualification is having been
in a similar circumstance a long time ago August 1970, in Cambodia, to
be precise. I was 25 years old then, covering the war for Time and
feeling invulnerable, a frequent, sometimes fatal journalist's malady.
The short of it is that I drove alone to somewhere I shouldn't have, and
wound up in a hole with the barrel of an AK-47 pressed to my forehead. I
was presumed dead for several weeks, and the conviction of my fellows
back in Phnom Penh just as it is among many today about Danny Pearl
was that I'd asked for it. The difference is, I came back.
There is a lot else about Danny
and the people who picked him up that is dissimilar, but every reporter has got to start
somewhere. And the place Danny Pearl began, shortly after 9/11, was with a
phone call to a number in Manhattan.
On the line that morning was Mansoor Ijaz, founder and chairman of Crescent Investment Management, LLC,
and a U.S. born-and-bred Pakistani-American with unusual friends and
interests. His business partner is Lieutenant General James Abrahamson,
former director of Ronald Reagan's Star Wars program; and the
vice-chairman of his board is R. James Woolsey, director of the CIA under
Bill Clinton. For a time Ijaz was also chums with Clinton and his
national-security adviser Samuel Berger. This came in handy in April 1997,
when, as a private citizen, Ijaz negotiated Sudan's counterterrorism offer
to the U.S. and again in August 2000, when Ijaz had Pakistan and India on
the seeming verge of cooling the Kashmir cauldron. The deal broke down, as
did the relationship with the White House. But soon enough Ijaz was back,
as tight with George W. and Condie as he'd been with Bill and Sandy.
Danny called on a tip from Indian
intelligence, which said Ijaz was wired with leading jihadis. Figuring
that a prominent Pakistani-American who came recommended by Indian spooks
to get to Muslim militants must have been a gold mine for Danny.
Ijaz made introductions to three
sources: Shaheen Sehbai, editor of The News, Pakistan's largest
English-language daily; a jihadi activist he declines to name; and--most
fatefully-- Khalid Khawaja, a Muslim militant and a onetime agent with
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) who counts among his
very best friends Osama bin Laden.
Within weeks, Danny ... was in the
capital, Islamabad, 700 miles to the north, for a several-hour session
with Khalid Khawaja.
Khawaja was always good for a
provocative quote, which made him a journalist favorite. "America is a
very vulnerable country," he'd told CBS in July 2001. "Your White House is
the most vulnerable target. It's very simple to just get it." After the
U.S. began bombing Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, Asra got a zinger, too:
"No American is safe now ... This is a lifelong war."
Some dismissed Khawaja as a PR man.
But when it came to Muslim militancy, he was the real deal, having
acquired his credentials during the war against the Soviets in
Afghanistan, where, as an airforce squadron leader, Khawaja was serving
with the ISI, which was distributing CIA- purchased munitions to
mujahideen. The more radically Islamist the fighter, the more weapons he
got, including Osama bin Laden, who formed an instant bond with Khawaja.
It deepened when Khawaja was forced out of the ISI in 1988 after
criticizing military strongman Zia ul-Haq for not doing enough to Islamize
Pakistan--equivalent to questioning the piety of the Pope.
But despite his talk of bin Laden's
being "a man like an angel," Khawaja was sufficiently broad-minded [LOL]
in his allegiances that he got the Taliban to agree to receive Ijaz and
ex-CIA director Woolsey.
Khawaja, in short, was a source to
kill for, and Danny charmed him. Describing the reporter to Ijaz as
"competent, straightforward," and not given to asking "inappropriate
questions," Khawaja agreed to steer Danny to leading jihadis and to be a
sounding board during his time in country.
Danny made another valuable
acquaintance in Hamid Mir, editor of Islamabad's Urdu-language Daily Ausaf
and self proclaimed "official biographer" of Osama bin Laden. In their
last chat, in early November, bin Laden had boasted of possessing chemical
and nuclear weapons.
Mir is a Taliban enthusiast.
Quietly, though, Danny was onto
something much more compelling than the daily bombing reports: he'd found
links between the ISI and a "humanitarian" organization accused of leaking
nuclear secrets to bin Laden.
The group--Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN)--was
headed by Mr. Bashiruddin Mahmood, former chief of Pakistan's
nuclear-power program and a key player in the development of its atomic
bomb. Mahmood--who'd been forced out of his job in 1998 after U.S.
Intelligence learned of his affection for Muslim extremists--acknowledged
making trips to Afghanistan as well as meeting Taliban supreme leader
Mullah Mohammad Omar. But he claimed that all they'd discussed was the
building of a flour mill in Afghanistan. As for bin Laden, Mahmood said he
knew him only as someone who "was helping in different places, renovating
schools, opening orphan houses, and helping with rehabilitation of
widows."
That's not how the CIA saw it.
According to the agency, Mahmood and another nuclear scientist, Caudry
Abdul Majid, met with bin Laden in Kabul a few weeks before 9/11-- and not
to talk about whole-wheat bread. U.S. pressure got the scientists detained
in late
October, and they admitted having
provided bin Laden with detailed information about weapons of mass
destruction. But, for what was termed "the best interests of the nation,"
they were released in mid- December.
All this had been reported. What no
one had tumbled on to, except for Danny and Journal correspondent Steve
LeVine, were UTN's connections to top levels of Pakistan's ISI and its
military. General Hamid Gul--a former ISI director with pronounced
anti-American, radically Islamist views--identified himself as UTN's
"honorary patron" and said that he had seen Mahmood during his trip to
brief bin Laden. Danny and LeVine also discovered that UTN listed as a
director an active-duty brigadier general, and ran down a former ISI
colonel who claimed that the agency was not only aware of Mahmood's
meeting with bin Laden months before his detention but had encouraged his
Afghan trips.
A few days later Danny was back in
the paper with another exclusive, date-lined Bahawalpur, headquarters of
Jaish-e-Mohammed, one of the most violent jihadi groups, as well as one of
the best connected to the ISI. Jaish had been banned by Musharraf, its
bank accounts frozen, and its founder, Maulana Masood Azhar, placed under
house arrest. However, Danny later reported that the Jaish office in
Bahawalpur was still up and running, as was the Jaish account at the local
bank.
If Danny hadn't been on the ISl's
radarscope before, he was now. But Danny wasn't letting up; he now had his
sights set on the "shoe-bomber," Richard C. Reid.
Interest in the British ex-con
turned Muslim radical had tailed off since December 22, when he had tried
to blow up an American Airlines Paris- to-Miami flight by touching a match
to an explosive in his tennis sneakers. But there remained some dangling
ends, none more intriguing than who was giving Reid orders.
A story in the January 6 edition of
The Boston Globe got Danny on the case. It reported that U.S. officials
believed Reid to be a follower of Sheikh Mubarak Ali Shah Gilalni, a
leader of an obscure Muslim militant group named Jamaat ul-Fuqra ("The
Impoverished"). Described by the State Department's 1995 report on
terrorism as dedicated "to purifying Islam through violence," ul-Fuqra
recruited devotees from as far away as the Netherlands and had sent
jihadis into battle in Kashmir, Chechnya, Bosnia, and Israel. Since the
early 1980's, ul-Fuqra had also operated in the U.S. where, under the name
Muslims of America, it's largely black membership lived on rural communes
in 19 states, including-- according to authorities--money-laundering,
arson, murder, and the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Gilani was
for a time based himself in the States, but now he was mostly to be found
in a walled compound in Lahore, Pakistan, where a Pakistani official said
that one of his visitors was Richard C. Reid.
The Globe quoted a Gilani
"spokesman" and "friend" as denying any relationship between the sheikh
and Reid, and warning that further such accusations were not advisable.
"If you push him ... he has no option but to declare jihad on America,"
said Khalid Khawaja. "It will blow like a volcano."
Danny had stayed in regular touch
with friend Khawaja and, after seeing the Globe piece, asked if he could
put him together with Gilani. Out of the question, Khawaja said: Gilani
hadn't granted an interview in nearly a decade, and he certainly wasn't
going to give one now to an American reporter. "Don't try," he warned.
"You will not be able to do it."
Undeterred, Danny asked his
"fixer," an Islamabad reporter named Asif Furuqi, for a way in.
Furuqi asked around, and a
journalist friend told him about a man who could lead them to Gilani named
Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh.
[Sheikh] was born December 23,
1973, in Wanstead, an East London suburb. His parents had immigrated to
the U.K. from a village outside Lahore five years before, and Sheikh was
the eldest of their three children. Sheikh's father, Saeed Ahmed Sheikh,
was a successful businessman who generated enough income to send Sheikh to
the $12,000-a-year Forest School.
In 1987 Saeed Ahmed Sheikh moved
the family to Pakistan, and Sheikh, then 13, was enrolled in Aitchison
College, the subcontinent's Eton.
He was a standout in his studies
and popular with his classmates. The only problem was that once a month or
so there'd be a scrap between an old boy and a new, with Sheikh in the
middle, punching for the underdog.
Shipped back to the Forest School,
Sheikh was admitted to the London School of Economics. He read math and
statistics; made $1,500 a day peddling securities to his father's
customers.
During the next Easter holiday,
Sheikh joined a "Caravan of Mercy," taking relief supplies to Bosnia.
On his return to London, Sheikh
immersed himself in military theory, dropped out of the London School of
Economics, and went to Pakistan with an elaborate plan for guerilla
operations in Kashmir, including--novel twist--kidnappings.
In June 1994 he was invited to join
a kidnapping plot in India.
In late October, 1994, Indian
provincial police raided the kidnappers' hideouts. In the ensuing gun
battles, two officers and one of the kidnappers were killed, and Sheikh
shot in the shoulder.
The ISI paid for a lawyer, but it
didn't do any good for Sheikh, who was held without trial for the next
five years in a maximum-security prison.
But in late December, 1999, Azhar's
terrorist outfit--now renamed Harkat ul- Mujahadeen-seized an Indian
airliner with 155 passengers and crew aboard; slit the throat of a
honey-mooning Indian businessman; and demanded the release of Azhar,
Sheikh, and another jihadi. After the plane sat six days on the Kandahar
tarmac under the watchful eyes of the Taliban, the Indians gave in.
Azhar went to Karachi and, before
10,000 howling supporters, called for the destruction of the U.S. and
India. Then, after a few weeks touring under the protection of the ISI, he
announced the formation of Jaish-e- Mohammed, the terrorist group Danny
would find thriving in Bahawalpur.
Sheikh, for his part, stayed at a
Kandahar guesthouse for several days, conferring with Taliban leader
Mullah Muhammad Omar and--reports had it--Osama bin Laden, who was said to
refer to him as "my special son." When he crossed the Pakistan frontier in
early January 2000, an ISI colonel was waiting to conduct him to a safe
house in Islamabad.
He went next to Afghanistan, and
reportedly helped devise a secure, encrypted Web-based communications
system for al-Qaeda. His future in the network seemed limitless; there was
even talk of one day succeeding bin Laden.
Then came 9/11. Tracing the
hijackers' funding, investigators discovered that in the weeks before the
Trade Center attack someone using the alias Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad had
wired more than $100,000 to hijacking ringleader Mohammad Atta. On October
6, CNN reported that the U.S. had decided that Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad and
Sheikh were one and the same.
With recruits picked up from other
jihadi groups, Sheikh and Ansari, meanwhile, were mounting their first big
operation, the October I suicide truck-bomb attack on the Kashmir
assembly, which left 38 dead. On December 13 they struck again, with a
shooting and grenade assault on the Parliament building in New Delhi. That
incident-- which India charged was staged at the direction of the ISI--claimed
14 lives and prompted India to mass half a million troops on the Pakistan
border. Sheikh was in the midst of planning yet another operation--a
drive-by shoot-up of the American Center in Calcutta on January 22, in
which five guards were killed--when Danny Pearl dropped into his lap.
[Danny's] quest for a big score
finally seemed within reach. Come to Room 411 of the Akbar International
Hotel in Rawalpindi on January 11, he was told; "Bashir" would be waiting.
They talked for three hours. "It
was a great meeting," said Sheikh. Sheikh stressed that Gilani was a busy
man; he'd have to weigh the question carefully.
A Journal reporter's need for a
replacement computer gave Danny more reason than ever to get [his story].
The reporter, Moscow correspondent
Alan Cullison, had had his smashed in late November, when his car rolled
over while crossing the Hindu Kush. On his arrival in Kabul, a shopkeeper
offered to sell him a used IBM desktop and a Compaq laptop that--in a
billion-to-one shot-- turned out to have been recovered from the bombed
headquarters of Mohammed Atef, Osama bin Laden's abruptly deceased
military strategist, and on the IBM's hard drive he found a treasure trove
of al- Qaeda materials--at least 1,750 files, recording four years' worth
of terrorist doings. On the hard drive was the itinerary of a
target-scouting expedition by a terrorist referred to as "brother Abdul
Ra'uff." It matched to a T the pre-9/11 travels of Richard C. Reid.
There was more good news the same
day, with the arrival of an email from "Bashir," [who] reported that he'd
forwarded Danny's articles to Gilani and apologized for not having
contacted him sooner. Three days later he sent an email saying that Gilani
was looking forward to a get-together.
There was another story he wanted
to try to cram in: a piece on Karachi underworld boss Dawood Ibrahim, an
Indian-born Muslim terrorist who enjoyed the patronage and protection of
the ISI. In mid-January, while waiting for "Bashir's" next missive, Danny
called Ikram Sehgal for leads.
"He asked if I had any contacts
with the local Mafia. I said, 'Danny, the Mafia head here doesn't function
the way you think Mafias do. This is not something out of The Godfather. I
know the direction you're going in. Don't do this! Forget it! It you want
to know something, come over and we'll talk, not on the telephone.'"
"Bashir" checked in again on
Sunday, January 20, saying that Gilani would be available that coming
Tuesday or Wednesday. Sheikh said he'd forward the phone number of a
Gilani mureed (follower), who would escort him to the meeting.
Wednesday, January 23 was going to
be busy for Danny ... He had an appointment to see Jamil Yusuf, head of
Karachi's Citizens Police Liaison Committee, at 5:45. And then there was
Gilani. "Bashir" by now had told him that "Imtiaz Siddiqui" was the mureed
who'd lead him to Gilani. But Danny had yet to hear from him. Nor did he
know that Siddiqui's real name was Mansur Hasnain and that he'd been one
of the Indian Airlines hijackers who'd freed Sheikh in 1999.
Danny phoned his fixer in
Islamabad. "Give me a quick reply,," he said. 'Is it safe to see Gilani?"
Asif assured him it was; Gilani was a public figure.
Danny called the Dow Jones bureau
to ask the resident correspondent, Saaed Azhari, to set up a appointment
for him the next morning. Azhari said there was something Danny ought to
know; Ghulam Hasnain, the Karachi Time stringer, had gone missing the day
before. Guessing was, the ISI had picked him up because of an expose he
had written on Dawood Ibrahim for a Pakistani monthly.
[Jamil Yusuf] describes his last
meeting with a reporter of whom he was very fond.
"He asked me about Gilani, and I
said, 'I never heard of him. I don't think a lot of people have heard of
him in this country.' Then he told me about this Richard Reid thing. I
joked with him: I said, 'Danny, do something else. The guy is caught. He
is with the FBI. Why waste time?
"When he was sitting here, he got
two phone calls. He said, 'Yes,' he is coming there at seven o'clock,
somewhere close by. I did not know what was happening. He did not tell me
who he was going to meet." Danny's caller was the mureed he knew as
Siddiqi, saying to meet him at the Village Garden Restaurant, next to the
Metropole Hotel, a mile or so away. In the cab on the way over, Danny
phoned Mariane, telling her where he was going, and to start the party
without him. He'd be back around eight.
The hour came and went without any
sign of Danny.
Asra phoned Khawaja, thinking he
would know whether Danny actually had a meeting. But Khawaja said he'd
never heard of any meeting with Gilani.
No one was using the word
"kidnapping" yet, but that was the suspicion. It was confirmed early
Sunday morning by emails to The New York Times, The Washington Post, the
Los Angeles Times and two Pakistani news organizations. Attached were four
photographs of Danny in captivity, and a message in English and Urdu
announcing the capture of "CIA officer Daniel Pearl who was posing as a
journalist for the Wall Street Journal."
The note demanded that the U.S.
hand over F-16 aircraft, whose delivery to Pakistan had been frozen by
1990 nuclear sanctions; that Pakistanis detained for questioning by the
FBI over the 9/11 attacks be given access to lawyers and allowed to see
their families; that Pakistani nationals held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, be
returned to their homeland to stand trial; and that the Taliban's
ambassador to Pakistan, now held in Afghanistan, be returned to Pakistan.
Of Danny, the note said,
"Unfortunately, he is at present being kept in very inhuman circumstances
quite similar in fact to the way that Pakistanis and nationals of other
sovereign countries are being kept in Cuba by the American Army. If the
Americans keep our countrymen in better conditions we will better the
conditions of Mr. Pearl and the other Americans that we capture."
Sent on the account of kidnapperguy@hotmail.com,
the message was signed, "The National Movement for the Restoration of
Pakistani Sovereignty."
Police had never heard of the
group, but the name sounded a gong at the Islamabad bureau of the BBC,
which in late October had received a package from the "National Youth
Movement for the Sovereignty of Pakistan." Inside were an unplayable
videocassette and a computer printout announcing the capture of an alleged
CIA operative, "one Joshua Weinstein, alias Martin Johnson, an American
national and a resident of California." Also enclosed was a photograph of
a male Caucasian in his 30's. Flanked by two robed and hooded men aiming
AK-47s at his head, he was holding up a Pakistani newspaper showing the
date of his abduction--just as Danny would months later.
U.S. Embassy officials said at the
time that no one named Joshua Weinstein or Martin Johnson had either come
to Pakistan or been reported missing, and that the letter was a hoax. When
local police agencies and other Western embassies said the same, the BBC
let it drop. But the release of the virtually identical Pearl materials
got the BBC checking again with American diplomats. Was the first
"kidnapping" truly a hoax? Why so many similarities between the October
episode and Pearl's abduction? The response was a studied silence.
Police, meanwhile, were focusing
their suspicions on Harkat ul-Mujahedeen, the terrorist group that had
hijacked the airliner to free Sheikh and Azhar. With a number of its
members killed by U.S. air strikes, Harkat ul-Mujahedeen had the motive,
as well as the MO.
Trouble was, this didn't have the
feel of a jihadi operation. Where were the allahu ahkbars in the note? The
riffs about Palestine and infidels and Western demons? There wasn't even a
mention of "Zionist conspiracy." Instead, the demands read like an ACLU
press release. The English was too good, too. Usage, spelling, and grammar
were virtually perfect, and the few errors seemed deliberate, as if the
writer was trying to hide his education. Jihadis didn't have to feign lack
of schooling; most were illiterate.
One investigator, inspired, typed
"foreign," "kidnapper," and ''suspect" onto Google.com and clicked search.
The first listing that popped up was "Omar Saeed Sheikh." No one believed
it; it couldn't be that easy.
The Journal, meanwhile, was moving
on several fronts. Managing editor Paul Steiger issued a statement that
Danny was not now nor ever had been an employee of any agency of the U.S.
government, and the CIA broke long-standing policy to say the same.
Questions about what story Danny was working on were deflected, lest the
truth cause him harm. Finally, a confidential appeal was made to major
U.S. media organizations to not disclose that Danny's parents were
Israeli. All agreed.
But on January 30, Danny's
Jewishness leaked. In a story in The News, Kamran Khan, the paper's chief
investigative reporter, wrote that "some Pakistani security officials--not
familiar with the worth of solid investigative reporting in the
international media--are privately searching for answers as to why a
Jewish American reporter was exceeding 'his limits' to investigate a
Pakistani religious group."
"An India based Jewish reporter
serving a largely Jewish media organization should have known the hazards
of exposing himself to radical Islamic groups, particularly those who
recently got crushed under American military might," Khan quoted "a senior
Pakistani official" as saying.
Having let the religious cat out of
the bag, Khan--who doubles as a special correspondent for The Washington
Post--revealed Danny's relationship with Asra Nomani, whom he
claimed--falsely--Danny had imported from India to be "his full time
assistant."
"Officials are also guessing,
rather loudly, as to why Pearl decided to bring in an Indian journalist,"
Khan wrote. "They are also intrigued as to why an American newspaper
reporter based in Bombay would also establish a full time residence in
Karachi by renting a residence."
Khan's revelations stunned
colleagues. But there was no wondering about the source of his
information: he was well known for his contacts at the highest levels of
the ISI.
The same morning Khan's story
appeared, the kidnappers released a second note, changing Danny's supposed
spying affiliation from the CIA to the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence
service.
The language that followed differed
radically from the first note:
"U cannot fool us and find us. We
are inside seas,oceans,hills.grave yards, every where. We give u 1 more
day if America will not meet our demands we will kill Daniel. Then this
cycle will continue and no American journalist could enter Pakistan. Allah
is with us and will protect us. We had given our demands and if u will not
then "we" will act and the Amrikans will get teir part what they deserve.
Don't think this will be the end, it is the beggining and it is a real war
on Amrikans. Amrikans will get the taste of death and destructions what we
had got in Afg and Pak.Inshallah "
This did not sound like Sheikh--and
it wasn't. A note later found on his computer read, "We have investigated
and found that Daniel Pearl does not work for the CIA. Therefore, we are
releasing him unconditionally."
Having lured Danny, Sheikh had
ceased calling the shots; Danny's fate was now in the hands of more
murderous others.
Investigators, however, were still
concentrating on Gilani, who turned himself in on January 30, protesting
his innocence and ticking off the names of more than a dozen senior and
retired officials who would vouch for his services to state security.
After interrogating Khawaja--who
backed Gilani's story--police began having second thoughts. UI-Fuqra had
never been involved with violence in Pakistan and indeed had become so
inactive of late the State Department had dropped it from the terrorist
list. Someone had set Gilani up. But who?
For days, nothing more happened.
Sheikh appeared to have vanished, and there were no further messages from
the kidnappers.
On his way to visit George W. Bush,
General Musharraf--who was now blaming India for the abduction--assured
the world that all would be well. The case had been cracked; Danny's
release was expected any minute.
February 14, Sheikh made a liar out
of him.
According to the police, he'd been
captured in a daring raid in Lahore two days before. The truth was that
he'd been turned over by Brigadier Ejaz Shah, home secretary of Punjab and
formerly a hard-line officer of the ISI. Sheikh had turned himself over to
Shah February 5, and for a week it had been hidden from the police.
"Whatever I have done, right or wrong, I have my reasons, and I confess,"
Sheikh said when he was brought before a magistrate. "As far as I
understand, Daniel Pearl is dead."
Police interrogated him for a week,
a silent ISI man always present, but got little else.
Then, one day, the lead
investigator--visited his cell. And then he told them nearly everything.
He'd learned that Danny had been
killed, he said, when he called "Siddiqi" from Lahore, February 5, and
ordered, "Shift the patient to the doctor"--a pre-arranged code for Danny
to be released. "Siddiqi" replied, "Dad has expired. We have done the scan
and completed the X rays and postmortem"--meaning that Danny had been
videotaped and buried. As he understood it, Sheikh said, Danny had been
shot while trying to escape. Where the videotape was or what was on it, he
said he didn't know.
The sole subject he refused to
discuss was the week he had spent with his ISI handlers. "I know people in
the government and they know me and my work" was all he'd say.
A week later the videotape was
recovered in a classic sting. A man (authorities won't reveal his
identity) called a Karachi journalist and said he had a tape of what had
happened to Danny Pearl, and would sell it to the movies for $100,000. The
journalist told the U.S. Consulate, which instructed him to tell the man
to bring it to the lobby of the Karachi Sheraton at four o'clock, where a
movie producer would meet him. An FBI agent played the role to perfection.
The rest you probably know. As of
this writing, Sheikh and three co- defendants were still on trial.
Everyone in Pakistan expects all of them to be convicted and sentenced to
die by hanging.
I never did answer the "why" of
everything. Sheikh said that the reason was to strike a blow at Musharraf,
while Musharraf himself said it was because Danny was "overly
inquisitive." And more than a few knowledgeable Pakistanis think the ISI
was involved. When asked by Vanity Fair whether it shares that view, The
Wall Street Journal issued a two-word written answer: "No comment."
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