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Pearl killed for exposing Pakistan al-Qaeda nuclear link
NICHOLAS CHRISTIAN
HIS beheading by Islamic extremists prompted revulsion around the world but neither Daniel Pearl’s kidnapping nor his murder appeared to require further explanation. He was Jewish and American - both, in the eyes of the Pakistani fanatics who had taken him captive, were reason enough to die.
Now, however, an even more sinister, suggestion has emerged; the reporter with the Wall Street Journal was killed because he knew too much. He had uncovered secret links between the Pakistan intelligence service, scientists working for its nuclear programme and Islamic terrorists so damaging that he could not be allowed to live, according to a new investigation by the French author and philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy.
Levy, French president Jacques Chirac’s special envoy to Afghanistan, believes the journalist had established that al-Qaeda was close to acquiring nuclear weapons from supporters working as scientists in the Pakistani nuclear programme.
The finding will be deeply embarrassing, not only for the Pakistan government - which has sought to play down the influence of extremist Islamic forces in the country - but also for the United States, which entered into an uncomfortable alliance with President Pervez Musharraf as it turned its sights towards Afghanistan in the wake of September 11.
Pakistan has already been accused of providing nuclear weapons know-how and equipment to North Korea in return for the missile systems it needs to deliver its warheads more effectively into the heartland of its arch-enemy, India. It also allegedly provided information to Kim Jong Il’s Stalinist regime on how to build and test a uranium-triggered nuclear weapon and how to hide nuclear research from US and South Korean intelligence. Now the fear is that some scientists working for the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission could pass on fissile material to al-Qaeda terrorists.
As one US intelligence official told the American journalist Seymour Hersh recently: "Right now, the most dangerous country in the world is Pakistan. If we’re incinerated next week, it’ll be because of HEU [Highly Enriched Uranium] that was given to al-Qaeda by Pakistan."
According to Levy, who retraced Pearl’s footsteps and has just published a new book on the case, the journalist had nearly completed an article revealing that al-Qaeda was close to obtaining nuclear weapons from supporters inside Pakistan’s scientific establishment.
He said: "Pearl’s conclusion, like my own, was that in Pakistan there are atomic scientists who are also committed Islamic extremists."
"He was kidnapped, obviously, because he was America, Jewish and a journalist... He was killed because I think that his kidnappers discovered that he knew too much."
Levy added: "What Danny Pearl was discovering was that these nuclear weapons might be less controlled than Mr Musharraf pretends and l than the secret services of occidental powers believe."
Pearl was lured into captivity with the promise of an interview with the shadowy Islamic fundamentalist Sheik Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani. Levy believes Gilani is the linchpin between the Pakistani secret services and al-Qaeda.
"Gilani, who is the chief of the Muslim sect which has one foot in Pakistan and one in America, happens to be one of the masters of Bin Laden - one of the gurus of Bin Laden," said Levy.
Furthermore, he believes that Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the British-born Islamic militant sentenced to death last year for Pearl’s abduction and murder, had been working for the Pakistan Interservices Intelligence agency, ISI. The ISI is known to have backed the Taliban in Afghanistan.
"It was a planned crime, organised according to cold strategy," said Levy.
"I think that Omar Sheikh was an agent of al-Qaeda, close to Bin Laden, and an agent of the ISI, close to l’appareil d'Etat de Pakistan [the state apparatus of Pakistan]."
Yesterday Professor Paul Wilkinson, chairman of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St Andrews University, said it was possible that al-Qaeda had sought technical information from scientists working for the Pakistani nuclear programme.
"Of course it would have occurred to them that they might obtain information from very near at hand, from their neighbouring country, because Pakistan had its own programme for developing its own nuclear weapons. Of course, it is possible that some members of that programme would have sympathies, ideologically, with extreme fundamentalism."
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