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Probe IDs Pearl Abductor
Thursday, February 7, 2002
By John Donnelly
Globe Staff

The psychology of arresting family members, the official said, was to increase pressure on Saeed to release Pearl unharmed.

KARACHI, Pakistan -- Source
When Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl attempted in January to find a radical Muslim preacher for a story on alleged shoe bomber Richard Reid, he located a man who described himself as an associate of the religious leader.

But, investigators now believe, the man was no associate - he was Sheikh Omar Saeed, a terrorist named by Pakistani police yesterday as the mastermind behind Pearl's kidnapping.

Investigators yesterday intensified their focus on trying to catch Saeed, who has been linked to Al Qaeda and previously had served five years in an Indian jail for the kidnapping of four Western tourists. Saeed has a history of using aliases to attract Westerners, police said.

''There was an innocence about Daniel,'' said Jameel Yusuf, chief of the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee, which fights crimes such as kidnapping. ''It could happen to anybody, but he was gullible in this case.''

A senior Karachi police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Saeed's fake identity as someone close to Sheikh Mubarik Ali Gilani gave him a clever cover, and sent police in the wrong direction for more than a week.

''This game suited them perfectly,'' the police official said. ''For one week, the concern was all Gilani, so we lost eight or nine days in the stupid exercise.''
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2002 © Boston Globe Electronic Publishing. Inc.

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