Omar Sheikh: if not Daniel Pearl, a trail with links to ISI, 9/11 mastermind and bin Laden One of three terrorists released at Kandahar after the IC 814 hijack, his ‘handler’ is now Pak interior minister

| | Published 16.04.20, 02:59 PM

Was it a coincidence or was it purposely timed for when everyone was too busy worrying about the Covid-19 crisis? Last week, the Sindh High Court overturned, citing a lack of evidence, the conviction of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh on charges of murdering Daniel Pearl. It, however, found him guilty of a lesser charge of kidnapping and sentenced him to seven years in prison. Omar Sheikh, who has been in custody since 2002, will be released as the sentence for kidnapping will be deemed to have been completed. In India he’s remembered as one of the three terrorists released at Kandahar after the hijacking of IC 814. The other key figure released with him was Maulana Masood Azhar who went on to found the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). Omar Sheikh is a 46-year-old British citizen. He was born in London into a moderately prosperous family and initially attended an independent school (whose alumnus included English cricketer Nasser Hussain). He went on to spend two years in the exclusive Lahore boarding school Aitchison College (Imran Khan is an alumnus) which may have been either to achieve the ambitions of every upwardly mobile Pakistani middle-class family or to smoothen some rough edges.


According to some accounts, Pearl’s killing had been described as “warning shot” from militants to the government. His death was followed by a series of suicide attacks and domestic turbulence. Enter Ijaz Shah. At this point, as the jehadis grew more adventurous and even attacked Musharraf’s convoy (December 2003), the dictator turned to Ijaz Shah and made him the Director-General of the Intelligence Bureau (2004-08). Shah brought to the table a long association with creating and breaking political organisations, of undermining the judiciary and connections to jehadi organisations. Benazir Bhutto had named him as one of those behind the 2007 Karachi bombings. Gen Ziauddin Butt, the former DG ISI, had alleged that it was Shah and the IB who had kept Osama bin Laden in a safe house in Abbottabad (Shah’s hometown). Butt retracted after Shah threatened to file a defamation suit. Shah’s understanding of, and deep connections with, jehadi organisations is probably why Imran Khan brought him in as a federal minister of parliamentary affairs in April 2019. A month later, he was made interior minister. His appointment is obviously intended to fireproof the Imran Khan government from homegrown jehadi elements as Pakistan moved to meet some of the FATF conditions such as the ban on the Jamaat ud Dawa (JuD) and the JeM and their front organisations as well as the conviction of JuD chief Hafiz Sayed and the mysterious “disappearance” of Maulana Masood Azhar. The US has termed the verdict an “affront to victims of terrorism everywhere” and secretary of state Mike Pompeo tweeted that the US “will not forget Daniel Pearl”. To deflect the outrage, Pakistan announced that it would appeal to the Supreme Court and detained Omar Sheikh for a further three months on public safety grounds. If it is true that Omar Sheikh has been loyal to the ISI and served 18 years for a crime he may not have committed, his acquittal is to be expected particularly when his “handler” is the interior minister. However, he is likely to be embroiled in many more cases so that there are legal grounds to block his extradition to the US. There are too many linkages, with Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and the ISI, which could unravel. The author is a former special secretary, R&AW