Associated Press
KARACHI, Pakistan — Police arrested a British-born Islamic militant Tuesday they say masterminded the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl — the biggest break yet in the quest to free him. An official close to the investigation said the suspect told police Pearl is still alive.
Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, 27, was arrested Tuesday afternoon in the eastern city of Lahore, according to Tasneem Noorani, a senior official of Pakistan’s Interior Ministry. Saeed was flown to Karachi late Tuesday for further questioning, the government news agency reported.
Following the arrest, police fanned out across this city of 14 million people, raiding homes of suspected Islamic extremists and searching settlements along the bleak and thinly populated Pakistani coast. Police cautioned that rescuing Pearl could take time.
Saeed "is one who is highly educated and one who I would feel is a hard nut to crack," Karachi police chief Kamal Shah said. "I don’t think it would be very easy to break him straight away. It would take time I feel before we get all the details about Daniel from his interrogation."
Saeed’s capture followed an intensive, nationwide manhunt and was announced ahead of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s meeting today with President Bush in Washington, D.C. Musharraf is expected to seek U.S. economic and political support to help combat Muslim extremism in this predominantly Islamic country of 147 million people.
Pearl, 38, the Journal’s South Asia bureau chief, disappeared Jan. 23 on his way to meet with Islamic extremist contacts. He was believed to be working on a story about links between Pakistani militants and Richard Reid, the man accused of trying to detonate explosives hidden in his sneakers on a Paris-to-Miami flight in December.
Copyright ©2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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