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| Pearl’s Kidnapper Reminisces About his First Kidnappings of Westeners |
| 2004-02-24 |
| From the thirty-five-page handwritten prison diary of Omar Saeed Sheikh On July 26, 1994, I arrived at Indira Gandhi International Airport. My instructions were to spend the first night in some good hotel and then the next day call the two phone numbers I had been given. I was to ask for a "Farooq." Maulana Abdullah (a Harkat operative in Pakistan) had given me these instructions over the phone... Sultan (an accomplice) took me to a guest house in the Jamia Masjid bazaar area. After we checked in, Sultan became much more friendly. I asked him if Mr. Zubair Shah (the chief of my mission) had arrived, and he said not yet but he would soon.... He reminded me that the instructions they had received from Pakistan were that I was supposed to do the job I was sent for, namely kidnapping, and not interfere in what they were doing. .... Nearing the end of August, I was told by Sultan that "someone has come — meet me tomorrow at Jamia mosque and we’ll talk with him." I knew it must be Shah-Saab. ... "Your responsibility is the foreigners," he said. "I’m pursuing the other channels also, but the people concerned won’t know about you and you won’t know about them. Remember, American first priority, then British and French"... The next day, I saw a foreign chap wandering about. I asked him where he was going. He said Dehra Dun, and I quickly made up my mind. So I said, "What a surprise! I’m going there too!" and got with him on the bus. His name was Richard, and he was a British student who had arranged to teach at Doon School, Dehra Dun. By the time we got to Doon School, I had not only initiated a friendship; I had put forward the idea of spending time together touring India. I spent the night at Hotel Relax at Dehra Dun but failed to start up a conversation with the foreign couple staying there. .... It was about the third week of September when Shah-Saab told me that he had finally managed to arrange a house in a remote area in Saharanpur where the neighbourhood was Muslim and undeveloped to the extent that it was unlikely to have an effective system of informers. When I saw the house, my heart sank. How the hell was I supposed to bring a foreigner all the way here? And unnoticed by the local people? Siddique was jumping up and down in joy and making little gestures with the pistols. Sultan beamed at me and said, "Like it?" .... Shah-Saab’s next instruction was to hunt down an American. I set off for the YMCA. By evening I had established rapport with a chap I thought to be American and had told him about my village when to my annoyance I found out he was German. I was about to leave when an American joined in the conversation. The American, whose name was Daniel Skinner, had been teaching English as a volunteer and was leaving India because of lack of funds. I turned to him and said, "Hey, I need someone to teach English at my village school." I arranged to meet him a couple of days hence and confirm the details. When we spoke again, he agreed to accompany me the next day. .... For my part, I thought, it was finally over, success or failure lay with Him above. Siddique and I wandered about the nearby roads and talked philosophically and not so philosophically. We talked about Afghanistan, Kashmir, Bosnia, and England. We talked about Shah-Saab and the other comrades and the great days we had had in India, the jokes that would be remembered for years to come. He told me about the girl back home he was engaged to, I told him about the one I wasn’t engaged to. .... |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |
| #2 Omar's up for the high jump, though I suspect he'll "escape" before that happens. |
| Posted by: Fred 2004-2-24 6:03:38 PM |
| #1 A question I ask a lot, but why are these pricks still alive? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2004-2-24 4:12:03 PM |