PAKISTAN: PAKISTANI POLICE ISSUE A "MOST WANTED" LIST OF 10 SUSPECTED ISLAMIC MILITANTS

Record ID: 640789

  • Title: PAKISTAN: PAKISTANI POLICE ISSUE A "MOST WANTED" LIST OF 10 SUSPECTED ISLAMIC MILITANTS
  • Date: 29th June 2002
  • Summary: CU: DOCUMENT DISPLAYING CONTACT NUMBERS AND CONTACT ADDRESSES OF AUTHORITIES
  • Embargoed: 14th July 2002 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: KARACHI, PAKISTAN / UNIDENTIFIED LOCATION
  • Country: Pakistan
  • Reuters ID: LVA6GFYVMQGD4291D0MEXW5TDJKM
  • Story Text: Pakistan has issued a "most wanted" list of 10 suspected Islamic militants and offered big rewards for their capture in connection with the killing of U.S.
    reporter Daniel Pearl and the bombing of Western targets.
    Pakistani Police posted in newspapers rewards totalling 20 million rupees ($330,000 USD) along with photographs of the 10 "most wanted" men on Saturday (June 29).
    Several of the suspects were named as members of the banned Lashkar-e-Janghvi group, a Sunni Muslim movement that police have previously associated with sectarian killings of minority Shi'ite Muslim Pakistanis, rather than with attacks on foreigners.
    Top of the list was Asif Ramzi, a former leader of the group named as a suspect in the murder of Daniel Pearl, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal who was kidnapped in the southern port city of Karachi in January and subsequently killed.
    The list also named suspects for the first time in a suicide bombing outside the U.S. consulate in Karachi that killed 12 Pakistanis on June 14 and in the bombing of a bus in the city on May 8 that killed 11 French engineers and two Pakistanis.
    A man identified as Sharib was named as a suspect in both bombings. A second man, named as Naveedul Hassan, was listed in connection with the attack on the U.S. consulate.
    Other wanted men whose photographs appeared included three un-named associates of Ramzi, two unidentified Lashkar-e-Janghvi activists and a man named as Abdul Rehman Sindhi.
    Sindhi was named as an associate of Saud Memon, a fugitive businessman police say is the owner of land on the outskirts of Karachi where a body was found that investigators believe may be that of Pearl.
    Four men are already on trial in Pakistan for the abduction and murder of Pearl, including the alleged mastermind Amar Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British-born Islamic militant also known as Sheikh Omar. All four have denied the charges against them.
    Pearl disappeared in Karachi on January 23 while working on a story about Islamic militants. A month after he went missing, a gruesome video showing Pearl had been murdered was delivered to U.S. consulate officials in Karachi.
    The police chief for Sindh Province, Syed Kamal Shah, said some of the suspects named in Saturday's newspaper advertisement had previously been wanted for sectarian killings.
    Individual rewards ranged as high as three million rupees ($50,000 USD) in the case of Ramzi and two other suspects.
    Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf is battling a string of militant groups blamed for a decade of sectarian violence and also faces pressure from India, which accuses Pakistan of supporting separatists in disputed Kashmir.

    (US$1=60 Pakistani rupees)
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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