Pakistan arrests 2 suspects in Daniel Pearl case

Karachi, June 5: Pakistani police have arrested two Islamist militants suspected of involvement in the 2002 kidnapping and murder of U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl, government officials said today.

Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was kidnapped in the city of Karachi in January 2002 while he was researching a story on Islamist militants. He was later found beheaded.

A British Islamist militant has been sentenced to death for the murder.

The two new suspects were arrested yesterday in Kashmore, a remote town near the border of southern Sindh and southwestern Baluchistan provinces.

''Both were suspected in the Daniel Pearl case. They are being interrogated,'' Waseem Akhtar, Sindh provincial government adviser on home affairs told Reuters.

He identified the two as Ata-ur-Rehman, alias Naeem Bokhari, and Faisal Bhatti. He gave no more details.

Kashmore's police chief Noor Ahmed Paicho said the pair belonged to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Sunni Muslim militant group with links to al Qaeda.

He said they were arrested as they were travelling in a taxi to Baluchistan.

Police recovered ten hand grenades, two AK-47 assault rifles, two pistols and explosives from them, Paicho said.

A court in Karachi sentenced British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, or Sheikh Omar, to death in 2002 for his role in Pearl's kidnapping and murder. Three co-accused were jailed for life.

The convicts appealed to the Sindh High Court in July 2002. The government also appealed to the same court, asking for enhancement of the punishment for the co-accused.

But court hearings have been repeatedly postponed, mostly because of the absence of lawyers representing the convicts.

Under Pakistani law, a convict has the right to appeal in superior courts but no case can be heard if one of the lawyers of the convict is absent.

Reuters>