Daniel Pearl Murder Suspect Nabbed in Pakistan
Pakistan has arrested a former militant leader in connection with the 2002 murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, security officials said on Monday.
Qari Abdul Hai, once a leader of the outlawed Sunni militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), was arrested on Sunday during a security crackdown in Pakistan’s biggest city, Karachi, said the officials.
Pearl, an American, was kidnapped in Karachi while researching a story on Islamist militants in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al Qaeda militant who claimed responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks, said he beheaded Pearl after his abduction.
It was not clear what role Hai was suspected of playing in the abduction and murder.
The LeJ has emerged as a major security threat in Pakistan. It has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings that killed hundreds of Shi’ites this year.
Security officials said Hai was linked to several attacks on Western targets since Pearl’s death.
A Pakistani court sentenced British-born militant Omar Sheikh to death for killing Pearl.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO