Pearl case: no clue to Farooqi
TOBA TEK SINGH- The district police and investigating agencies have failed to find any clue to Amjad Hussain Farooqi involved in kidnapping of Daniel Pearl.
Farooqi has three nick names – Imtiaz Farooqi, Haider and Mansoor Hussain.
Police had arrested his two brothers Muhammad Javed, Muhammad Amer and two relatives Muhammad Mohsin and Muhammad Ilyas a week ago to find the whereabouts of Farooqi. They were kept at some unknown place while police raided different places on their reports across the country without any success.
A source disclosed that Farooqi had no contacts with his parents or relatives and nobody knew about his whereabouts.
When this correspondent visited Farooqi’s Chak 687/27-GB, Gujjran Wali, a couple of days ago no one from his family or relatives was present in the village. His father and younger brother had gone with a ‘tableeghi jamaat’ on a 40 days ‘chilla’.
Villagers said they had heard some eight months ago that Farooqi had been killed in Afghanistan in a war against the Northern Alliance. But six months ago, he suddenly appeared in the village for a day and had resolved a dispute between two football teams. They also informed this correspondent that the house of Farooqi was built some 40 years ago when his grandfather had sent money from abroad. The house developed cracks due to flood water some 15 years ago and since then the family could not get it repaired.
His brother Muhammad Amer, now in police custody, has done MSc and is running a private middle school in the village. His family has only 17 acres of land in a bordering village of the district near river Ravi.
Farooqi was married three years ago and has a two-and-a-half-year-old baby. His in-laws live in Chak 478-GB, Samundri, Faisalabad district. Police had arrested 10 other villagers who were released after the preliminary probe.
Villagers did not believe when this correspondent told them that Farooqi had allegedly played the role of go-between in Pearl’s kidnapping.
Farooqi had never introduced himself as worker of any religious organization, but he had gone for jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan, they added.
Source: Dawn
Date:2/23/2002
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