President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan agreed in principle to surrender the chief suspect in the killing of Daniel Pearl to the United States, but only after Pakistan concluded its criminal investigation and was confident that the hand-over would meet legal requirements, Pakistani officials with knowledge of the discussion said Tuesday night.
Musharraf made the commitment to Wendy Chamberlin, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan. She reiterated a request that has been on the table since November for the transfer of Sheik Omar Saeed, the British-born Muslim militant who is the main suspect in the kidnapping and killing of Pearl, 38, a correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.
It is not clear how long it will take to satisfy Musharraf’s conditions.
Tuesday night, in another episode that demonstrates how difficult it will be for Musharraf to succeed in curbing the country’s militant groups, unidentified gunmen wielding automatic weapons shot and killed nine people and wounded more than 10 others in an attack on a Shiite mosque in Rawalpindi. The city, less than 20 miles from the capital, is the headquarters for Pakistan’s army.
The police there said they believed the attack had been carried out by a Sunni Muslim group known as the Army of the Prophet’s Companions, one of the militant groups Musharraf outlawed last month.
The attack was the worst episode of sectarian violence in Pakistan since the current crisis in the region began, and the fact that it took place near the army headquarters is interpreted by some Pakistani officials as an attempt to demonstrate to Musharraf that his power to curb extremism is limited.
Extradition expected
The Pakistani officials who discussed the general’s meeting with Chamberlin on Tuesday said they had little doubt that Saeed would eventually be turned over to U.S. authorities for prosecution in the case of Pearl and in the kidnapping of four Westerners, including one American, in India in 1994.
Saeed was secretly indicted by a grand jury in Washington last November for his role in the 1994 kidnapping.
On at least two occasions before Pearl’s kidnapping on Jan. 23, the United States formally asked that Saeed be arrested. Pakistani officials essentially ignored those requests.
The failure to find and arrest him before Pearl was abducted has the potential to weigh heavily on relations between the two countries, especially given indications that Saeed, who was released into Afghanistan in 1999, has benefited from ties to Pakistan’s secret intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence.
On Monday the White House said explicitly that it wanted Saeed in U.S. hands.
Subject raised, U.S. says
Throughout the day Tuesday, both sides seemed to be trying to patch over the appearance of any rift.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Mark Wentworth, said only that Chamberlin had “raised the subject” of extradition in her meeting with Musharraf.
The Pakistani officials who described the meeting said Chamberlin had told Musharraf that she understood Pakistan’s position.
It is not clear exactly what legal requirements Musharraf was referring to in citing the factors that might delay any hand-over, the Pakistani officials said.
The United States and Pakistan do not have an extradition treaty. In the past, Pakistan has handed over several terrorism suspects to the United States without a formal hearing. But this case may be more complicated, because Saeed is in Pakistani custody and facing court proceedings.
Witness in case heard
On Tuesday, Saeed, 28, made an unexpected appearance in a Karachi anti-terrorism court for a hearing.
For the first time since his arrest earlier this month, the court heard from a witness in the case, whose testimony was intended to link the militant to Pearl’s killing. Pakistani officials said the witness played an apparently innocent role in arranging a meeting in Karachi that led to Pearl’s abduction.
Saeed announced in one previous hearing that he had carried out the kidnapping, but that confession has no bearing under Pakistani law, and the authorities have been slow to build a legal case against him. They asked a judge Monday for 14 more days to file charges, in the hope of finding Pearl’s body or the murder weapon.
Pearl’s widow, Mariane, who is seven months pregnant with the couple’s first child, said in an interview Tuesday on CNN that she would tell her son that his father had died a hero.
“His spirit, his faith and his convictions have not been defeated,” she said. “And I am extremely proud of him.”
