As Passover approaches and Jews in America and around the world gather for the high holy days, Ruth and Judea Pearl still await justice for the brutal killing of their son in Pakistan 18 years ago.
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was beheaded in 2002, and his killers recorded the atrocity on video. Pearl was made to “confess” that he was an American and a Jew — the so-called crimes for which his captors executed him. One of Pearl’s killers, al Qaeda leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, is in prison at Guantanamo Bay for this and many other terrorism-related crimes. But his associates, including British Pakistani Ahmad Omar Saeed Shaikh, had their sentences reduced by a Pakistani court last week — yet another instance reflecting Pakistan’s leniency toward jihadi extremists.
Soon after Pearl’s murder, Pakistan’s vast jihadi underground circulated the video of Mohammed beheading the young journalist as Pearl said, “My name is Daniel Pearl. My father’s Jewish, my mother’s Jewish, I am a Jew.” The video became very popular in Pakistan, reflecting the deep roots of anti-Semitism in the country.
Pearl had gone to Karachi, Pakistan, a few months after 9/11 to investigate alleged links between al Qaeda and Pakistan’s premier spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. Mohammed pretended to be a source and lured Pearl into the trap that led to his kidnapping and murder.
But Mohammed’s own history highlights Pakistan’s failure in controlling and possibly even abetting terrorists. Mohammed, a graduate of the London School of Economics, had been arrested in India in 1994 for kidnapping an American tourist on behalf of a Pakistani terrorist group backed by the ISI. He was released in exchange for passengers on an Indian Airlines plane hijacked to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in 1999.
Given his track record, Mohammed should have been under observation by Pakistani authorities, but successive Pakistani governments have supported terrorism against India as a means of drawing attention to Pakistan’s position in its dispute with India over Kashmir. Instead of being detained or observed in Pakistan, Mohammed continued to operate on behalf of Pakistani terrorist group Jaish-e-Muhammad, or JeM for short and maintained links with al Qaeda.
After being arrested and convicted in the Pearl kidnapping and murder, Mohammed faced a death sentence and remained defiant. But as is often the case in Pakistan with terrorists, his appeals dragged on while he enjoyed considerable comfort in prison and even managed to stay in touch with his jihadi colleagues and friends.
Last week, the High Court in Sindh province reduced his sentence to seven years imprisonment, offering Mohammed a chance for release fairly soon, given that he has been in prison for several years already.
The Pakistani government, responding to international outrage at the court decision, has announced that it will go into appeal and will not free Mohammed. But those who know how things in Pakistan really work know that the stage has likely been set for another murderer’s freedom.
The appeals process will help the Pakistan government get through threats of financial sanctions by the United Nation’s Financial Action Task Force, which periodically questions Pakistan’s failure to meet international obligations in cracking down on terrorist financing and operations in the country.
But Pakistan’s deeper problem, of state-supported religious extremism, continues to grow, notwithstanding its government’s statements and the willingness of U.S. and European diplomats to accept them at face value.
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