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| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| Alleged Daniel Pearl killer says met bin Laden twice: report |
| 2005-04-19 |
| ISLAMABAD - An Islamic militant sentenced to death for the murder of US reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan said in a rare interview published on Tuesday that he met Osama bin Laden twice in Afghanistan. British-born Sheikh Omar also admitted he was "involved" in kidnapping Pearl in 2002 but said he did not take part in his brutal murder, according to the latest edition of the English-language magazine Newsline. The magazine said it had obtained written answers from Sheikh to questions smuggled into his cell while he was at Adiala Jail in the northern town of Rawalpindi, near Islamabad. He has since been moved to another prison. "Yes, I met him twice in Afghanistan," Sheikh said when asked if he had met the Al-Qaeda chief, the first time the 31-year-old has admitted encountering bin Laden. He did not say when the meetings took place. But he added that he did not agree with all bin Laden's methods and was now committed to Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed, fugitive head of Afghanistan's Taliban regime, as the "overall leader of all mujahideen (holy warriors)". Sheikh expressed no regret for his actions, saying only that he had "some causes of anxiety, such as the fact that my son is growing up without me -- he's three years old now". His lawyer, Mohsin Imam, said he was not aware of the interview and could not verify its contents. Sheikh's appeal against his conviction for plotting the abduction and murder of Wall Street Journal correspondent Pearl in the southern city of Karachi is pending in a Pakistani court. The High Court of Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital, is due to take up the appeal on May 13. He was convicted by an anti-terrorism court in July 2002 and sentenced to death. Sheikh was held briefly at Adiala in connection with the probe into an abortive attempt on the life of President Pervez Musharraf in December 2003, and is now at Hyderabad jail in southern Pakistan. Pearl, the Journal's Bombay-based South Asia correspondent, disappeared in Karachi on January 23, 2002, while working on a story into the murky underworld of Pakistani militant groups. One week after Sheikh's arrest was made public, a graphic video depicting the gruesome decapitation of Pearl was delivered to the US consulate in Karachi. Sheikh told the magazine Pearl was "an informer, an American spy." |
| Posted by:Steve |