Pakistan seeks FBI agent as witness in Pearl case
ISLAMABAD- Pakistan has asked the US to allow a senior FBI agent to appear before the court in Karachi as a witness in the case of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, sources said.
A formal request by Pakistan’s Foreign Office to the US State Department was made last week seeking the appearance of a special agent of the FBI, Roland J. Wilczynski. The US has not yet given any response on the request.
Initially the US was reluctant to allow production of the FBI agent in a Pakistani court. The US authorities, however, might agree to allow one of the US officials to appear before a Pakistani court as a witness since the prosecution believed it would help them strengthen the case against the suspects Involved in the kidnapping and the killing of Daniel Pear1.
A decision is likely to be taken by the United States soon, a source from the diplomatic corps of Islamabad said.
Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema, the Interior Ministry spokesman, confirmed that Pakistan had sought the US State Department’s permission to produce the FBI agent in the court. Pakistan is likely to ask the appearance of more than one US officials in the case who have been investigating the case.
“We would definitely request for the appearance of people who have been involved in the investigation,” Cheema said. He, however, said that he had not any knowledge if the production of more officials had been sought.
According to the set court procedure investigators appear in the court as witnesses. “This is a normal course,” Cheema said. An unspecified number of FBI agents have actively been involved in the investigation of Pearl kidnapping case.
The FBI agent sought for his appearance in the court, as witness is believed to be a cyber crime expert who had helped Pakistani investigators track down three suspects who had sent emails. The capture of these suspects lead to the arrest of prime suspect Sheikh Omar.
A day after Pearl’s kidnapping Karachi police and media persons received two emails with Pearl’s pictures and demands of the kidnappers. Another email message followed later declaring that Pearl would be murdered within 24 hours if the demands were not met. The police could not trace the senders of these two emails for over three weeks. A cyber crime expert FBI team, however, tracked down the senders of the emails who were immediately arrested. Their arrest led to the detention of Sheikh Omar, the prime suspect.
A joint FBI-Pakistan police carried out to arrest Amjad Farooqui, another suspect who is believed to be involved in the kidnapping and killing of Daniel Pearl.
Pakistan and the US authorities are also examining the possibility to extradite Omar, a British national, to the United States. “All arrangements have been finalized to whisk him away on a few hours notice,” the sources said. “We are just waiting for the final approval.”
It was learnt that Pakistan Embassy in Washington was in contact with Islamabad for finalizing the legal and logistical details of Omar’s extradition.
Cheema the Interior Ministry spokesman, said the government had not yet taken any decision over extradition of Sheikh Omar as the investigation into the case was on, He said the decision to extradite Omar would be taken only after the investigation was completed.
Omar’s wife, Sadia Omar, had moved the Sindh High Court against the extradition of her husband to the United States. In a decision on March 5th, the court disposed of the petition after the assurances by the government that if Omar was handed over to the United States it would be without any contravention of the law of the land.
Under the Extradition Act 1972, the country requesting extradition has to produce relevant material before a judge to be appointed by the federal government. Omar, who is with Karachi police on remand until March 12th was produced in the court on March 9th where one witness, a taxi driver recognized him as the person who took Daniel Pearl away.
Source: The Nation
Date:3/12/2002
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