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Chief Suspect In US Reporter's Kidnapping To Be Extradited
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| Police in Pakistan have kept up a watch in front of Daniel Pearl's residence in Karachi |
LAHORE, Feb. 4 (IslamOnline) - Pakistan’s military government has decided to extradite Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani, the chief suspect in Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl’s abduction, to the United States, one of the Pakistan's widely circulated English daily newspapers, The Nation, reported today.
Gilani was arrested in Rawalpindi on the charges of kidnapping the U.S. journalist. According to authorities, top U.S. officials have given evidence about the accused that suggests he was provided with $400,000 every month from certain organizations with which he established a network for carrying out his activities.
As such, the U.S. has demanded Pakistan to hand over Gilani for further investigation. An official in Pakistan’s Interior Ministry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity with an American journalist, has also hinted that the extradition of Gilani will be carried out within 48 hours.
However, the Pakistani Interior Minister Lt. General Moinuddin Haider on Monday denied the report that the government had any plans to hand over Gilani to US authorities. “We have courts in the country, and he (Gilani) will be tried here as per our own law”, Haider told IslamOnline.
According to U.S. media reports, The Nation said, the little-known, group, Jamaat al-Fuqra, with which Pearl was trying to contact in the days before he disappeared, is suspected of a series of small-scale terrorist attacks in the US.
According to reports appearing in the U.S. media, Gilani set up the group in New York in 1980 on his first visit to the U.S. He has admitted receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in donations from America, but says the organization preaches a peaceful Islamic message.
Al-Fuqra - “the impoverished” - was known to support the guerrilla war in Kashmir, but has not been a leading sectarian or militant force in Pakistan. The group is suspected of attacking ‘Hare Krishna’ organizations as well as other Muslim clerics in the US.
A house in Virginia believed to be linked to the group was raided by police in December 2001, and two people were charged with illegally purchasing guns.
There is little doubt that Pakistani authorities have come under intense pressure from Washington to bring a quick and peaceful solution to the kidnapping. Pakistani police arrested Gilani in Rawalpindi on Wednesday and took him to Karachi for questioning. Although he denied any link to the kidnapping, police detained several of his colleagues. As per media reports, it has become a test case for Musharraf.
For Pakistan, the only silver lining is its linkage to India. Pakistanis in the U.S. believe that the disclosure made by Abdul Sattar while in Berlin, is based on solid evidence, and is not a PR gimmick, otherwise it will rebound back and provide another chance for India to malign Pakistan in the eyes of the Bush administration.
Ever since the Taliban collapsed, Musharraf has been at pains to show U.S. that it is willing to tackle “militancy”.
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