Author:
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: February 00, 2002
Notwithstanding claims by Pakistan
of Indian links to the kidnapping of US journalist Daniel Pearl, a key
suspect in the case has said he had provided 'invaluable services' to Pakistan's
security service agency in the past.
The suspect, Syed Mubarrak Ali Gilani,
told interrogators that besides having provided invaluable services to
Pakistan's secret services, he received half a million dollars annually
in donations from abroad.
Pakistan daily The News reported
on Friday that Gilani, a Rawalpindi-based millionaire militant who surrendered
to the police two days ago pleading ignorance about Pearl's abduction,
gave names of the security officials he knew for an independent verification
of the claims.
To back his claims, Gilani during
his interrogation at Rawalpindi requested the senior police investigators
for permission to call his contacts in the government.
The police dismissed the disclosures
as not having any relevance to the present case.
"There is no need to cross-check
the sensitive information," a police official said.
According to the newspaper, intelligence
officials had persuaded Gilani to surrender. To facilitate his appearance
before the police on Wednesday, a mid-level law security official from
a sensitive agency is understood to have played an active role, a senior
police official said.
Gilani was considered a prime suspect
in Pearl's kidnapping as he was believed to have been the last person whom
the reporter met in the course of his investigations into the activities
of Al Qaeda and jihadi (holy war) groups.
Another key suspect, Aarif alias
Hashim, for whom the police launched a manhunt is believed to be dead.
As Pearl's kidnappers extended the
deadline for his execution by a day on Thursday, Aarif's father told the
police in Bahawalpur in Pakistan's Punjab province that he received an
information from Afghanistan that his son had been killed while fighting
US forces.
Bahawalpur was the headquarters
of the banned militant group Jaish-e-Muhammad, one of the two organisations
blamed by India for the attack on Parliament.
Aarif, activist of an unidentified
militant organisation, had reportedly met Pearl in Rawalpindi twice before
the WSJ correspondent went missing.
Meanwhile, Gilani also sprang a
surprise on the police by offering to prove that his disciples in the US
contributed about half a million dollars every year to his religious activities
in Pakistan. He said he received donation in the form of cash and wire
transfers.
Married six times, the 65-year-old
heavy-built cleric said he had invested a portion of the donations in real
estate in the North West Frontier Province and in Punjab and owned an estimated
one billion rupees worth of agriculture and commercial real estate in Pakistan.
