ISLAMABAD: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the militant who spent over 18 years behind bars for masterminding the kidnapping of slain US reporter Daniel Pearl, traded privilege and scholarship for a lifetime of jihad, kidnappings, and in the end a jail cell.
Born in London in 1973 to a affluent Pakistani garment service provider, Omar was given the very best schooling, together with enrolment at a personal main college in London, a stint at Lahore’s prestigious Aitchison School, and a quick tenure on the London College of Economics (LSE).
He deserted his comfy Western upbringing after only a 12 months at LSE, reportedly travelling to Bosnia in the course of the brutal Balkans warfare within the early Nineteen Nineties, the place his jihadist zeal sprouted after coming into contact with Pakistani militants.
The previous boxer and arm wrestling fanatic is believed to have returned to Pakistan to spend a number of months in a militant coaching camp, and travelled to the disputed Himalayan area of Kashmir to combat Indian forces.
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In India he carried out his first kidnapping, abducting an American and three British vacationers in 1994.
Indian police captured him in a shootout, initially pondering he was one of many British hostages due to his clipped accent and Western bearing.
He was jailed in New Delhi, however by no means charged.
In jail he met Pakistani jihadist Maulana Masood Azhar, who went on to discovered the hardline Kashmir militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed.
New Delhi freed each Azhar and Omar in 1999 when the hijackers of an Indian Airways aircraft demanded his launch in trade for his or her hostages.
Omar returned to Lahore to reside together with his household, marrying in November 2000.
– Pearl killing –
Omar got here into contact with Pearl, the Wall Avenue Journal’s South Asia bureau chief, when he was delving into the murky underworld of Pakistani militant teams after the September 11 assaults and within the wake of the US invasion of Afghanistan.
The 2 exchanged a number of emails, based on police, as Pearl sought introductions to militant leaders.
Of their correspondence Omar introduced himself as a heat, family-oriented man — all a part of a ploy to lure Pearl to a lure that in the end led to his abduction throughout a reporting journey in Karachi in January 2002.
Omar was arrested in February 2002 whereas Pearl was nonetheless lacking, and boasted to a Karachi court docket that the journalist was already useless.
Per week later, a graphic video depicting Pearl’s grotesque decapitation was delivered to the US consulate in Karachi.
Omar remained defiant even after being sentenced to dying for his position within the kidnapping.
“We will see who will die first, both I or the authorities who’ve organized the dying sentence for me,” he stated in a message learn out by his lawyer.
Nonetheless, in January 2011, a report launched by the Pearl Undertaking at Georgetown College following an investigation into his dying made chilling revelations, claiming that the improper males have been convicted for Pearl’s homicide.
The investigation, led by Pearl’s good friend and former Wall Avenue Journal colleague Asra Nomani and a Georgetown College professor, claimed the reporter was murdered by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 assaults, not Sheikh.
Mohammed, who’s presently within the US army jail in Guantanamo Bay, confessed to killing Pearl, based on American officers in 2007.
Defence attorneys for Sheikh had his homicide conviction and dying sentence overturned in early 2020, and that was upheld by the nation’s Supreme Court docket Thursday, paving the best way for his launch together with three different accomplices.
