KIM HOUSEGO Canadian Press
Tuesday, April 29, 2003
PARIS (AP) - Islamic extremists killed Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl because he had discovered dangerous secrets about their ties to the Pakistani intelligence community, according to an investigation by a respected French writer.
In a 538-page book released this week, entitled Who Killed Daniel Pearl? philosopher and best-selling author Bernard-Henri Levy retraces the reporter's final steps in Karachi before he was kidnapped and subsequently beheaded in January 2002.
Levy believes that Pearl was about to complete an article revealing that the al-Qaida terror network was close to acquiring nuclear weapons from supporters inside Pakistan's scientific establishment.
"Pearl's conclusion, like my own, was that in Pakistan there are atomic scientists who are also committed Islamic extremists," Levy said in an interview with Paris Match magazine published Wednesday.
Pearl, who was 38, was lured into captivity with the promise of an interview with a top Islamic fundamentalist, Sheik Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani. Pearl's remains were found in May after a gruesome video showing his slaying was sent to a news agency in Karachi.
"I immediately sensed the affair was out of the ordinary," said Levy, who spent the past year travelling in Pakistan, India and the United States researching the book. "Because of the brutality of the crime
. . . and the actors involved."
Who Killed Daniel Pearl is a personal account, and Levy says that many of the arguments put forth in the book are based on his own theories.
He argues that British-born Islamic militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh - convicted and sentenced to death by a Pakistani court last year for the abduction and killing of Pearl - was acting for Pakistan's powerful Interservices Intelligence agency, or ISI.
"My conclusion is that he is also part of, working for, the Pakistani secret services," he said.
The ISI is known to have given strong backing to the now-ousted Taliban regime in Afghanistan until President Gen. Pervez Musharraf threw his support behind the U.S.-led war on terrorism following the Sept. 11 attacks.
Levy also says that relatively unknown Pakistani individuals, such as Gilani, may in fact be controlling al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
"Bin Laden himself has masters . . . who we don't see but who manage in secret," Levy said. "Such and such general in the Pakistani secrets services. Or a grand imam."
Levy also said that "one of my theories, is that Pearl is dead because he was tracking this man (Gilani), the Don Corleone of al-Qaida."
Levy said his research leads him to believe that Saeed Sheikh was "an important member of al-Qaida and is among the people who helped bin Laden sort out his finances."
Those same people, "in liaison with the Pakistani secret services, put in place the finances for the Sept. 11 attacks," Levy said.
The writer has previously published works about the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, as well as the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the threat it poses to the West.
© Copyright 2003 The Canadian Press