| The stake through his heart confirms he'll stay that way... |
DNA tests confirm that a slain Pakistani militant was the man accused of beheading Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and carrying out two assassination attempts on Pakistan's president, a minister said Tuesday. Amjad Hussain Farooqi, 32, leader of an outlawed al-Qaida-linked Sunni militant group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, was killed Sept. 26 when security forces raided a home in Nawabshah, a town in southern Sindh province. Authorities said Farooqi was asked to surrender but refused and attacked with grenades instead.
"Put the grenades down and come out witcher hands up, Farooqi!"
"You'll never take me alive, coppers!"
"Hokay." |
Pakistani officials maintained that the slain militant was Farooqi, but said they conducted DNA tests to be sure. Days after Farooqi's death, a suicide attacker detonated a bomb hidden in a briefcase at a Shiite mosque in the eastern city of Sialkot, killing 31 people and wounding more than 50. On Tuesday, Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao traveled to Sialkot, where he told reporters that Friday's attack was possibly a reaction to Farooqi's death. "This is very much possible," he said, but added that police were probing other "aspects as well." He did not elaborate. Intelligence officials have identified Farooqi as a co-organizer of two attempts to assassinate President Gen. Pervez Musharraf last December by blowing up his motorcade. Musharraf escaped injury both times, but 17 others were killed. Farooqi is also suspected of taking part in the 1999 hijacking of an Indian airliner to Afghanistan that resulted in a hostages-for-prisoners exchange that freed British-born militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh from an Indian prison. Sheikh was sentenced to death for his role in setting up the Pearl abduction in 2002. Three other Pakistani associates have been imprisoned for life. All four have appealed their sentences. Police are still searching for others believed to have been involved. |