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Pakistan
Police Arrest Suspect Over Kidnapped US Reporter
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| Pearl
disappeared in Karachi a week ago
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ISLAMABAD,
Jan. 31 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Pakistan police on
Wednesday arrested a Muslim leader, Sheikh Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani,
wanted concerning the disappearance of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl,
senior officials told news agencies.
But
there was no sign of Pearl, a Wall Street Journal
reporter who was last seen in the southern port city of Karachi a
week ago.
The
38-year-old Pearl disappeared after telling his wife he was going to
interview Gilani, a leader of a little-known Islamic group called
Tanzeem-ul-Fuqra, based in the eastern city of Lahore.
Gilani's
organization is believed to have links with Richard Reid, the
alleged "shoe bomber" overpowered on a Paris-Miami flight
on December 22, 2001, AFP reported.
CNN
reported that Pearl was planning to ask Gilani about contacts
between Reid and his group, but Gilani's spokesman said that the
leader had never made arrangements to meet with Pearl, claiming
Gilani was not involved in the kidnapping.
Gilani
was found alone in a house in Rawalpindi, near Islamabad, AFP
reported. "He has been arrested and is being moved to
Karachi," Rawalpindi police chief Syed Kaleem Imam told AFP.
The arrest came after police said they had widened the search for
Pearl.
"This
is the first success for us," a police officer involved in the
investigation told AFP. "We hope to unearth the missing links
now."
An
unknown group called the "National Movement for the Restoration
of Pakistani Sovereignty" claimed it had kidnapped Pearl in an
e-mail to the Wall Street Journal. They accused Pearl of being a
"CIA officer ... posing as a journalist," a claim denied
by both the CIA and the Journal.
The
e-mail contained pictures of Pearl wearing shackles in captivity,
including one with a pistol pointed at his head, and protested
against the U.S. treatment of prisoners from Afghanistan and
Pakistan held in Cuba.
The
U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) joined the hunt after the
e-mail claimed Pearl was being kept "in very inhuman
circumstances quite similar in fact to the way Pakistanis and
nationals of other sovereign countries are being kept in Cuba by the
American Army."
"If
the Americans keep our countrymen in better conditions, then we will
better the conditions of Mr. Pearl and all other Americans that we
capture," it added.
Wall
Street Journal
managing editor Paul Steiger sent an e-mail, obtained by news
agencies, appealing to the group for Pearl's release.
In
the letter, Steiger said that Pearl's wife, who is six months
pregnant with the couple's first child, was very distressed. He
denied that Pearl had any connection with the CIA or the U.S.
government, and emphasized that the kidnapping could do nothing to
alter U.S. policies.
Gilani's
organization was little known in Pakistan, but it was active in the
United States in the late 1990s, a Pakistani police source close to
the case said.
"Tanzeem-ul-Fuqra
was on the U.S. watch-list of terrorist organizations before being
de-listed in 1999," the source said.
A
powerful spiritual leader at an Islamic shrine in the eastern city
of Lahore, Gilani is believed to have four wives, including two
African Americans, AFP said.
With
additional reporting by Ayesha Ahmad
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