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Fbi established is 100k atta Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2002/20020422/world.htmhttp://www.tribuneindia.com/2002/20020422/world.htm
Probe reveals Omar ‘dealt with Pearl at ISI bidding’
WSJ scribe knew of ISI-jehadi link
London, April 21
A new investigation has revealed detailed links between Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Omar Sheikh, prime suspect in Wall Street Journal Daniel Pearl’s kidnapping and murder case.
The report in The Sunday Times, after a lengthy investigation, presents the fullest profile of Sheikh, yet points to vital clues that show the involvement of the ISI in terrorist actions carried out by him.
Britain-born Sheikh knows too much about this connection to ever be allowed to leave Pakistan alive, the report says. The report says President Pervez Musharraf is reported to have told U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain that “I would rather hang Sheikh myself than have him extradited.”
One “bizarre clue” the report mentions is the demand by Pearl’s kidnappers to honour an agreement to sell F-16 fighter aircraft to Pakistan. “This hardly squared with the outlook of a militant Muslim organisation fighting a jehad in Afghanistan and Kashmir,” the report says.
The next clue comes with the revelation that Sheikh was in custody, the report says. On a visit to the USA, Musharraf announced on February 12 Sheikh had been captured by police in Lahore. But Sheikh shouted out in court that he had turned himself at the Home Secretary of the Punjab province, Brig Ejaz Shah, on February — a full week earlier.
“It would appear that the ISI had its own reasons for holding Sheikh for a week before announcing to the world that he was in custody,” the report says. “One thing it would have wanted to do was to make sure its protégé did not give more away than absolutely necessary about his relationship with Pakistan’s intelligence services.”
This “missing week” shed new light on Indian reports last October that Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmed, Director-General of the ISI, had been forced into retirement after FBI investigators uncovered credible links between him and Sheikh in the wake of September 11 attacks.
According to these reports, the FBI team established that in early September, Ahmed had instructed Sheikh to transfer $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, leader of the hijackers who crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11.
“There is a further angle that implicates the ISI,” the report says. “It had strong reasons for tailing Pearl: he was normally based in India, which to the ISI was prima facie evidence that he was reporting back to Indian intelligence.”
When the ISI discovered Pearl was trying to find out who was financing terror groups, it was the final straw, the report says. It quotes a source as saying: “He was beginning to get too close to understanding the links between the ISI and the “jehadis.”
The source said: “Sheikh was their (the ISI’s) man and he was brought in to deal with Pearl; the ISI knew everything.”
The report says the Karachi police, which deeply distrusts the ISI, leaked details of their interrogation of Sheikh in which he talked about his ISI links. As a result, ISI operatives broke into the newsroom of The News, the largest English language newspaper, in February.
The News is edited by Shaheen Sehbai, the first local journalist Pearl contacted when he arrived in Pakistan. Failing to prevent publication of Sheikh’s confession, the ISI demanded an apology from Sehbai, who fled to the USA fearing for his life.
The report quotes M.J. Gohel of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a security and terrorism policy assessment group that has been researching Pearl’s murder, as saying: “Sheikh is a vital key that can open all the doors to the Al- Qaida network, to the links between the Pakistani military intelligence establishment and the terror groups, and can destroy Musharraf’s credibility with Washington.”
The report says the full story of the kidnapping of Pearl will probably never come to light. Quoting documents, The Sunday Times said it has found evidence to show that Sheikh, was close to the radical Pakistani cleric Maulana Masood Azhar — a close associate of Bin Laden,” the report said.
Sheikh was first introduced to Azhar nine years ago in a training camp for Islamic guerrillas in Afghanistan. India released both of them in 1998 in exchange for passengers of a hijacked Indian Airlines plane held hostage in Kandahar.
Even though he denies the latest charges against him, he has admitted involvement in a string of kidnappings since 1994 and the attack on the Indian Parliament last December. Meanwhile, the assets of Abu Hamza, one of Britain’s most radical Islamic fundamentalists, are to be frozen Hamza, a claw-handed cleric who preaches Islamic holy war at the Finsbury Park mosque in North London, is on a list of terrorist suspects published this weekend by G7 Finance Ministers at their Washington summit.
The US Treasury said Hamza (43) was one of the 10 “terrorist financiers” who were “all linked” to Al-Qaida and Bin Laden. The cleric is accused of being a “legal officer” to the “Islamic Army” of Aden, a terrorist group that has kidnapped foreigners. IANS, PTI
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