HYDERABAD, Jan 20: Ahmed Omer Saeed Sheikh, who is facing death sentence in the Daniel Pearl murder case, was shifted to Islamabad under the directives of the Interior Ministry, a Sindh home department source confirmed to this correspondent here on Monday.

The source said the prisoner was shifted to Islamabad for security reasons. When asked whether Mr Sheikh could be shifted without any lawful reason keeping in view that he was a condemned prisoner, he said necessary permission had been obtained from the Interior Ministry, Islamabad, adding that it had been done for security reasons.

The source, however, said he believed that the convict would be interrogated in connection with two suicide attacks on President Gen Pervez Musharraf's life in December last year. He dispelled an impression that some jail officials of Hyderabad would also be interrogated in this regard.

Meanwhile, the jail administration here remained tightlipped though the news about shifting Mr Sheikh to Islamabad was splashed in almost all newspapers. A jail source said the matter was kept so secret that only a few officials, including jail superintendent Muzaffar Alam Siddiqui, knew about it. Some jail staffers were sent back on Sunday when they turned up at the jail to clear the backlog of work gathered over the week.

Aslam Sheikh on Monday came to the central jail for his weekly interview with his brother Sheikh Adil, another convict with the Daniel Pearl kidnapping-cum-murder case. It could not be known whether he was allowed to meet him.

The DPO, investigations, Fareed Jan Sarhandi, and the ACLC in charge, Zulfiqar Arain who had shifted Omer Sheikh to Karachi, also denied having accompanied him. The former claimed that he was on leave while the latter said he knew nothing about it.