Sh Omar denies links to body recovered in Karachi
HYDERABAD- The chief suspect in the slaying of Daniel Pearl denied any connection to a body found in Karachi this week believed to be that of the Wall Street Journal reporter, a defense attorney said Sunday.
British-born militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh said he and his three co-defendants, currently charged with the kidnapping and murder of Pearl, “have nothing to do with all that,” attorney Rai Bashir quoted him as saying.
Bashir said that Saeed also denied that he has ties to Lashkar-e-Janghvi, an Islamic militant group linked to al-Qaida. Three suspected members of the group led police to the body earlier this week, according to the state-run Pakistan Television. The suspects remain in police custody.
“I do not belong to Lashkar-e-Janghvi. I’m a Jihadi,” Bashir quoted Saeed as saying. Members of Lashkar-e-Janghvi are thought to have taken refuge in Afghanistan during the Taliban’s rule there, and the group was banned by Pakistan earlier this year.
Pearl, an American and the Journal’s South Asia bureau chief, disappeared four months ago in the restive port city of Karachi while researching a connection between Pakistani militants and Richard C. Reid, who was arrested in December on a flight from Paris to Miami with explosives in his shoes.
On Sunday, Police Chief Kamal Shah said a team of doctors from Lahore will be traveling to Karachi on Monday to take back blood and hair samples for DNA testing. Results from the tests, which will be conducted in Lahore, could take up to a week, he said.
Source: The News
Date:5/20/2002
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