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| February 2, 2002 | Saturday | Ziqa’ad 18, 1422 |
Kidnapping suspect had links with India: FM
BERLIN, Feb 1: Pakistan Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar said on Friday that mobile phone records showed the chief suspect in the kidnapping of US reporter Daniel Pearl had been in contact with three Indian government officials.
The alleged kidnapper “had made a number of foreign calls and included among the numbers that he had called in India were numbers of persons who occupied certain important positions inside the Indian government,” Sattar told a news conference in Berlin.
“That is all we know. We are not alleging that this person was working in complicity with somebody in India. But I think this fact should be known to all persons interested,” he said after talks with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.
Sattar was referring to Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani, leader of the radical Islamic group, Jamaat al-Fuqra, who a police official said was brought to Karachi for interrogation on Wednesday.
The suspect has said he is not involved in the kidnapping.
Investigators say Pearl, who is based in Bombay for the Wall Street Journal, met Gilani before he disappeared and police have detained and questioned a number of people close to the religious leader and his group.
“From this telephone number of Mubarak Shah several calls were made to foreign numbers, and included in this list are three prominent Indian personalities,” Sattar said.
The minister said police had obtained the information from the itemised bill of mobile telephone calls. New Delhi has dismissed allegations of an Indian link as “ridiculous.” Pearl’s captors have threatened to kill him unless the US releases Pakistani prisoners.—Reuters
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