M A I N   N E W S

Pearl case: hunt on for middleman

Karachi, February 16
The Pakistani police was today hunting for the alleged go-between in a network of kidnappers said to have abducted US reporter Daniel Pearl more than three weeks ago.

Self-confessed mastermind of the kidnapping, militant Sheikh Omar told interrogators yesterday that another militant named Amjad Hussain Farooqi was the go-between in a network of cells involved in abducting Pearl, a senior investigator told AFP.

But 24 days after the disappearance of the Wall Street Journal correspondent from this southern port city, there was no sign whether he was alive or dead.

The arrest of Farooqi, a member of the Harkat Jihad-e-Islami organisation, would “solve the mystery” of Pearl’s disappearance, the investigator said. Investigators believe he is in Karachi.

Sindh provincial police chief Kamal Shah said unravelling the network of cells, which investigators say were unknown to each other, would take some time.

“It is difficult to anticipate a time schedule because they are highly trained and everyone has tried to conceal their own identity,” Mr Shah told AFP yesterday.

“You have to understand that it is a network, and to break a network takes time.”

The police believes Farooqi collected Pearl from a Karachi hotel on the day he disappeared, when the reporter had told his wife he was going to interview a militant leader.

The absence of any proof of Pearl’s death has given investigators hope he is still living. AFP