TIME - Who killed Pearl?

"Omar Sheikh is a British born and educated Islamic militant who has been sentenced to death in Pakistan for the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in early 2002. He almost certainly didn't do it. This is confirmed by, amongst other reports, a United Press International newswire issued last September which quotes Bob Baer, a former CIA case officer. Baer claims to hold important details relating to the actual person believed to have carried out the crime [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed]..."
The 911 Omar Sheik Files
Fight Smart, 2 January 2003

In February 2003, a month after NLPWessex distributed its original research on the Daniel Pearl murder case over the internet via 'Fight Smart', TIME Magazine reported (below) on its own ground breaking investigation. TIME unearthed further evidence supporting a key element of the 'Fight Smart' claim - the person who killed Daniel Pearl was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, not Omar Sheikh

Within A Month Of This Embarrassment For The British, Pakistani, And American Governments Mohammed Is Reported Arrested In Circumstances Described By Journalists As Fabricated

So why do Pakistan and America still want British Citizen Omar Sheikh executed for the murder of Pearl - a crime it seems clear he didn't commit?
And why are they, as well as Britain, not insisting on Omar Sheikh being tried for his alleged involvement in 911?

What do these developments tell us about how much Britain, Pakistan and the US knew in advance of the 911 attacks? And what do they tell us about the real nature of the so called 'war on terrorism'?
Read the original 'Fight Smart' stories
'The 911 Omar Sheikh Files' - Click Here
'What Did Britain Know About 911?' - Click Here

"Pakistani police sources tell TIME that at least one witness says Pearl's throat was slit by a top al-Qaeda terrorist, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed..... Fazal Karim has identified Mohammed as the man who drew the knife across Pearl's throat, two men who participated in Karim's interrogation tell TIME. Karim's testimony may weaken the government's case that [Omar] Saeed [Sheikh] was both ringleader of the plot and Pearl's executioner... Despite this fresh evidence, Pakistani police working on the Pearl case noticed a distinct cooling in their superiors' interest..."
Who Killed Pearl?
TIME magazine, 3 Feb 2003

".... the corporate media are still largely sticking to the demonstrably false Official Story of 911... So research into the events tends to be by alternative sources. Dissidents believe that the blocking of FBI agents who could have stopped the 911 plot was deliberate act of complicity by the Bush Junta whose popularity and pre-existing invasion goals [of Afghanistan and Iraq] were given an enormous boost by success of the attacks. Now the Natural Law Party has produced a superb piece of research into the British connection [with] Al Qaida.... ex-MI5 employee David Shayler has demonstrated that MI6 was plotting with elements linked to Al Qaida to assassinate Ghadaffi as late as the mid nineties... These are not the only links between Al Qaida and Bush/Blair..... the NLP has investigated the murder of [American] journalist Daniel Pearl and highlights an astonishing fact: The [British] Pakistani sentenced to death for the murder of Pearl, Omar Sheikh, is the same Al Qaida contact who wired USD 100,000 to Mohammed Atta shortly before 911 on the instructions of the head of Pakistani Intelligence General Mahmoud who quietly resigned soon after. Astonishingly, Mahmoud on the days around the 911 attacks was in a series of secret top level meetings in the White House and with hawkish senators on Capitol Hill .... The NLP suspects that Pearl was murdered because he was investigating the smoking gun USD 100,000 transaction and that Sheikh was framed for the murder to stop him talking... [A British MP] has put down a question on the matter to the Foreign Office, which they have refused to answer... The NLP research is to be found at
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/WATomarsheikhgate.htm ."
Ian Henshall, chair of INK the Alternative Publishers umbrella group in the UK
and publisher of 911dossier.co.uk
Crisis Newsletter, 27 January 2003

"...while Omar may have been our original target [in our search for Danny], in truth he's just one in a massively complicated chain... ultimately he is a tool. But whose? It's become clear that Omar doesn't know where Danny is. That's never been his role. He was the lure; others are the captors.... who is overseeing it all? Who pulls the strings?..."
'A Mighty Heart' by Mariane Pearl, widow of Daniel
Virago Press, 2003

"There are many in Musharraf's government who believe that Saeed [Omar] Sheikh's power comes not from the ISI, but from his connections with our own CIA.... True or not, it would be logical for the CIA to recruit an intelligent, young political criminal with contacts in both India and Pakistan."
Did Pearl die because Pakistan deceived CIA?
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 3 March 2002

"... I am amazed to find how much is circulating out there about Omar and his apparent links to both Al Qaeda and the ISI.... In October, the FBI were looking for a link between Omar Saeed Sheikh and the then director of the ISI, Lieutenant General Mahmood Ahmed. They wanted to know who instructed Omar to wire the $100,000 to Mohammed Atta. I read that Ahmed had been dismissed as head of the ISI by President Musharraf on October 7, 2001. So it appeared Omar may have associated with the head of ISI and Al Qaeda. He surrendered to another former ISI officer who held him in custody for a week until just one day before Musharraf met with President Bush.... Questions bounce back and forth in my brain like a Ping-Pong ball gone wild. The distinctions between good and bad, government organisations and terrorist organisations, are not simply fading: they seem to be faces of the same coin. Did Musharraf know Omar was in custody? Could he not know? The CIA (God only knows what their position is here) didn't know?.... One of the arrested Pakistanis from cell number two has claimed that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the third-highest ranking member of Al Qaeda, was not only one of the Arabic speakers but was the actual executioner [of Danny]. Mohammed was arrested on March 1, 2003, in Rawalpindi, and as of this writing is...'a guest' of the CIA, being held at an undisclosed location..."
'A Mighty Heart' by Mariane Pearl, widow of Daniel
Virago Press, 2003
(More details of this account - What was Daniel Pearl doing in Pakistan? - Click here)

"A top FBI counter-terrorism official told the US Senate governmental affairs committee on Thursday that investigators have 'traced the origin of the funding of 9/11 back to financial accounts in Pakistan.' John S Pistole, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counter-terrorism division, however, did not specify how those accounts in Pakistan were funded, or the role of Pakistani elements. The Times of India first reported on October 10, 2001 that India told the US that some $100,000 had been wired to the leader of the hijackers, Mahmud Atta, by British-born terrorist Ahmad Saeed Umar Sheikh. Indian authorities also told the US that the trail led back from Sheikh to the then chief of ISI, Lt Gen Mahmud Ahmad who was subsequently forced to retire by Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf. The FBI had been provided with the details, including Sheikh’s mobile numbers. But Pistole’s testimony is silent on these issues.... The FBI has estimated the September 11 attacks cost between $175,000 and $250,000. That money — which paid for flight training, travel and other expenses — flowed to the hijackers through associates in Germany and the United Arab Emirates. Those associates reported to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who managed much of the planning for the attacks from Pakistan, US officials have said. The Bush Administration is being cagey about declassifying 28 secret pages in a recent report on the 9/11 incident which officials say outline connections between Saudi charities, royal family members and terrorism. US authorities are silent about the role some Pakistanis may have played in the conspiracy. The role of Sheikh and Lt Gen Ahmad has yet to see the light of the day. Sheikh, wanted for kidnapping and terrorist conspiracy in India, has since been sentenced to death in Pakistan for the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl."
9/11 funds came from Pakistan, says FBI
Times of India, 1 August 2003

"It is.... rumoured that Pearl was in fact especially interested in any role played by the U.S. in training the ISI or backing it in any way.... Details of any U.S.-ISI cooperation would of course not be appreciated even in Washington, especially regarding U.S. cooperation in promoting any kind of Islamic militancy."
Pearl was probing spy agencies' role
Gulf News, 25 March 2002

Clinton, Bush and Bin Laden In Former Yugoslavia - US Backed Islamic Terrorism In The Balkans - Click Here

".... an official confirmation about the discovery of the Pearl's body will derail the ongoing trial against Sheikh Omar and 10 other persons, earlier identified by the police as [the] main accused in the kidnapping-cum-murder of Daniel Pearl... police have yet to officially acknowledge this major breakthrough in the Pearl case [which is managed from] the police's branch famously known as the CIA - -- the Karachi police wing officially assigned as the prosecutors in the Pearl case."
Pearl case cover-up leaves government clueless about new terrorist threat
The News (Pakistan), 23 May 2002

"I wonder why many questions are not asked [about 911]?... Even investigative journalists are fed propaganda and disinformation.... What has gone on, and goes on, in the name of intelligence services, are true crimes... Whoever wants to understand the CIA's methods, has to deal with its main tasks 'covert operations': below the level of war, and outside international law, foreign states are to be influenced, by organizing insurrections, terrorist attacks, usually combined with drugs and weapons trade, and money laundering. This is essentially very simple: One arms violent people with weapons. Since, however, it must not under any circumstances come out that there is an intelligence agency behind it, all traces are erased, with tremendous deployment of resources. I have the impression that this kind of intelligence agency spends 90% of its time this way: creating false leads. So that if anyone suspects the collaboration of the agencies, he is accused of the sickness of conspiracy madness. The truth often comes out only years later. CIA chief Allen Dulles once said: In case of doubt, I would even lie to the Congress! ... I know a lot of people, including very influential ones, who agree with me, but only in whispers, never publicly... Where this all comes together, the American intelligence services are not far away.... The CIA, in the state interests of the U.S., does not have to abide by any law in interventions abroad, is not bound by international law; only the President gives orders..."
Andreas von Bulow, former Cabinet Minister to Helmut Schmidt of Germany, and state secretary Ministry of Defence
Der Tagesspiegel, 13 January 2002

".... it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation. The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested... The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 9/11.... Given this background, it is not surprising that some have seen the US failure to avert the 9/11 attacks as creating an invaluable pretext for attacking Afghanistan in a war that had clearly already been well planned in advance.... the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into 'tomorrow's dominant force' is likely to be a long one in the absence of 'some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor'. The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the 'go' button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement. The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies."
Michael Meacher, former Blair government Minister - 'This war on terrorism is bogus'
Guardian, 6 September 2003

'Omar Sheikhgate'
Stop Press - May 2004

"....at least a dozen leading suspects in the kidnap and murder of the 38-year-old journalist [Daniel Pearl] have been arrested, but have not been charged or tried in connection with his death. Some have been accused of unrelated - and mostly lesser - offences. The three most recently captured suspects have not yet been charged, and their arrests have never been officially announced. The only cases brought so far in connection with Pearl's death have been those against Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the British-born al-Qaeda terrorist, who was convicted of kidnap and conspiracy to murder the American journalist, and three others who played relatively minor roles in the kidnapping. All were given life sentences for conspiracy to kidnap [except for Sheikh who was given death sentence, 'Fight Smart'], but are now appealing against their convictions in the country's high court. Pakistani authorities are said to be reluctant to put the new suspects on trial lest their evidence helps the first four win their appeals.... Investigators say that senior officials in the Sindh police - the force responsible for Karachi - are 'petrified' that if militants arrested in the past year were tried for their part in Pearl's murder, their earlier case against Omar Sheikh might unravel in the courts.' One official close to the investigation said: 'Even if these men have admitted their roles in the kidnapping and killing of Daniel Pearl, we simply cannot charge them because of its impact on that earlier case.'..."
Daniel Pearl 'refused to be sedated before his throat was cut'
Daily Telegraph, 9 May 2004

"Omar Sheikh... has... been named as one of the key financiers of Mohammed Atta,
the pilot of one of the jets that hit the World Trade Centre on September 11."
Daily Telegraph, 27 Jan 2002

Some Key Unanswered Questions

* Why is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not being tried for the murder of Daniel Pearl?
* Why has Omar Sheikh, a British citizen, been sentenced to be hanged for a murder Pearl's widow
thinks he did not commit?
* Why has the British Foreign Office welcomed Sheikh's conviction when even the BBC
has reported that he has not had a fair trial?
* Why is Omar Sheikh not being tried for his alleged role in 911 before he is executed?
* Why is the US not demanding the arrest and trial of Lt General Mahmoud Ahmed?
* Why is the role of Sheikh and Mahmoud in 911 being covered up, and why was Mahmoud meeting with Bush administration officials in Washington immediately before, during, and after 911?

* Why did the CIA not show any interest in a pre-911 tip off from one of its own former leading agents that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was planning to hijack planes?
* Why did the Justice Department not show any interest when the same source informed them as well after the murder of Pearl?

Fore More Information In Relation To The Above Questions See
"The Omar Sheikh Files"
Click Here

And Is The 911 Commission Going To Come Out With The Truth
Or Is It Going To Bury It?

"Three professional staff members of the United State's Independent National Commission investigating the Sept 11 terrorist attacks to draw possible linkages are currently in Pakistan but their visit has been kept under wraps, Dawn has learnt.... The three professional staff members of the 10-member commission arrived here last week to meet officials in key government institutions and to interview individuals that they deem relevant to their inquiry.... This is the first visit by staff members of the high-profile commission to Pakistan since it was formed in late 2002. The members of the commission have already received some official briefings in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, and have been travelling all over Pakistan. There has been no official word about their arrival from either a government office or the US embassy in Islamabad. None of the officials Dawn contacted were willing to even talk about the visit."
9/11 probe body's visit kept under wraps
Dawn (Pakistan), 28 October 2003

"Hoping to avoid partisan attacks, the Sept. 11 commission has drafted a final report that avoids placing blame on individuals in the Bush or Clinton administrations... The 10-member panel has been reviewing portions of the draft, the bulk of which is a factual accounting of events, including intelligence failures that could lead readers to conclude the attacks were preventable, four commissioners told The Associated Press in separate interviews. A separate section detailing the panel's recommendations remains under intense review... The bipartisan panel's final report is due July 26. However, portions of it, dealing with factual findings leading up to and including the attacks, already have been drafted and sent to the White House for vetting .... The commissioners who spoke to the AP said the panel wants to avoid blaming individuals to avert charges of partisanship that could undermine their work. 'We're going to say everything we need to say, but there's not going to be a political gotcha,' said Republican commissioner Slade Gorton, a former senator from Washington. 'It's very important that it be factual and leave major conclusions to the people of the United States...'"
Final 9/11 Report Slams FBI, CIA
Associated Press, 9 June 2004

"Is there more to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed than meets the eye?" - By Paul Thompson - Click Here
Media References for Omar Sheikh - click here

Who Was Pulling KSM's Strings And Was He Really Arrested 1 March 2003?
What Is The US Government
Trying To Hide In This Ongoing Mysterious Case?
Click Here