Accoring to prison officals, Ahmed Omer Saeed Sheikh is dangerous and charismatic. The British-born Islamist murderer of the American journalist Daniel Pearl has managed to convert the first four constables that were stationed outside his cell. This has moved prison authorities to rotate the guards staioned outside his cell almost every day. âHe is capable of converting the entire jail staff,â said one official. The convict paid tribute to Osama Bin Laden and condemned his victim as an âinformer/spy of Americaâ in an interview conducted by smuggling notes in and out of his cell, says a Telegraph report. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh said that he had met Bin Laden twice in Afghanistan and admitted to The Sunday Telegraph that he had been âinvolvedâ in the kidnap of Mr Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was beheaded on video in 2002 after being lured to a meeting in Karachi.
Sheikh rejected the âpillars of Western civilisationâ, pledged allegiance to the one-eyed fugitive Taliban leader Mulla Omar and declared that jihad would never cease, even if Bin Laden and Omar were killed. âIslamic resurgence will continue even if all the better-known leaders are martyred or captured,â he said. His uncompromising pronouncements came as Mr Pearlâs parents, Judea and Ruth, noted with âsadness and disappointmentâ the failure of Pakistan to carry out Sheikhâs death sentence, imposed three years ago after he was tried for their sonâs kidnap, and suggested that he could be implicated in planning bombings in London and elsewhere. âUsing the protection of his jail cell, [Sheikh] reportedly keeps in touch with his friends and followers in Pakistan and Britain, and advises them on future courses of action,â they wrote in the Journal.