BritainÂ’s MI5 has requested its counterpart in Pakistan to question Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, killer of American journalist Daniel Pearl, in connection with the abortive plot to blow up transatlantic flights bound for the United States. The British intelligence agency wants Omar Sheikh to be questioned because the London School of Economics graduate was the right hand man of Maulana Masood Azhar, founder of the Jaish-e-Mohammad.Omar Sheikh, who was arrested in February 2002 and sentenced to death in July that year for the murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter, has been shifted from Karachi Central Jail to a more secure colonial-era jail in Hyderabad, Sindh. Despite repeated requests for his extradition to the US, Islamabad has refused to oblige, fearing that American access to the condemned man could expose the Inter-Services Intelligence. An intelligence source said MI5 wants to know whether any of the 21 British nationals of Pakistani origin arrested in England had ever met Omar Sheikh.
The query has been prompted by the fact that the 7/7 London suicide bombers, who had been influenced by two Britain-based militant groups — Hizbul Tehrir and its splinter group Al Muhajiroon — had visited Pakistan prior to the bombings. On their trip, they are believed to have visited two religious seminaries in Lahore and Faisalabad — the Jamia Manzurul Islamia and the Jamia Raheemia — both run by Jaish.