A militant, Amjad Farooqi, wanted over US reporter Daniel
Pearl’s murder and mastermind of two attempts to kill
President Pervez Musharraf, is Al Qaeda’s kingpin
in Pakistan, according to security officials.
“If we catch him
we will succeed in breaking the nexus between Al Qaeda
and local jihadi groups,” said a senior officer
in security services. The official, who spoke on condition
of anonymity, described Farooqi, 30, as an “extremely
intelligent and elusive terrorist operative”.
President Musharraf said
in a television interview on Thursday that the “very
clever mastermind” of the attacks against him was
a Pakistani, who was prompted and assisted by a foreign
Al Qaeda operative. He did not name either man.
Intelligence officials
late last week said the president was referring to Farooqi.
Farooqi, from the remote rural town of Toba Tek Singh
in central Punjab province, joined the militant organisation
Harkatul Jihad-e-Islami militant group as a teenager.
In 1992 the group sent
the stoutly built jihadi novice, then aged 18, to Afghanistan
for training in arms and combat. He fought alongside Taliban
in their battles against rival Afghan Northern Alliance.
After the Taliban conquered
most of Afghanistan in 1996 the young fighters contacts
with Osama Bin Laden and his closest lieutenants deepened.
“He became an Ustad (master) at one of the key training
camps near Kabul,” the official said. The title
won him respect among various militant groups.
Farooqi had close contact
with Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Al Qaeda’s number three
and the alleged chief planner of the September 11, 2001
attacks. Khalid Sheikh was arrested in March 2003 near
Islamabad, the official said. He was also intricately
involved in the elaborate plot to abduct and murder Wall
Street Journal reporter Pearl in early 2002, he said.
Farooqi provided the militants who kept Pearl in a shed
on Karachi’s outskirts after the reporter was abducted
on January 23, 2002, a police officer who investigated
the case said. He was “very close” to Ahmed
Omar Saeed Sheikh, the British-born militant convicted
of plotting Pearl’s abduction and murder.
“Omar told us when
he thought of kidnapping Pearl, the first man he contacted
for help was Farooqi,” the police investigator said.
“Omar lured Pearl into the trap and rest of the
job was done by Farooqi’s men. This man is so sharp
and secretive that he kept Omar Sheikh in the dark about
the real identities of those whom he recruited for carrying
out Pearl’s abduction.” In February Omar was
shifted from Hyderabad jail to a prison in Rawalpindi
for interrogation after investigators had traced Farooqi’s
involvement in President Musharraf’s assassination
bid.
“We grilled Omar
for more than two months but even he did not know Farooqi’s
possible whereabouts,” the security official said.
Investigators said Farooqi’s real value was that
he was one of the very few militants who still have the
lists and addresses of all those who trained in Afghanistan
camps
