(RSF/IFEX) – Karachi police have arrested a new suspect in the 2002 murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl, following a shootout in the southern Pakistani city on 2 March 2005. The suspect, Mohammad Sohail, who is approximately 30 years of age, was taken to a Karachi court after the shootout, where a judge ordered his […]
(RSF/IFEX) – Karachi police have arrested a new suspect in the 2002 murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl, following a shootout in the southern Pakistani city on 2 March 2005. The suspect, Mohammad Sohail, who is approximately 30 years of age, was taken to a Karachi court after the shootout, where a judge ordered his detention until 7 March to allow for questioning.
Police claim Sohail has confessed to playing a role in the abduction and murder of the “Wall Street Journal” reporter. He is suspected, in particular, of having filmed Pearl’s decapitation by his kidnappers.
A member of Harkat Jihad-e-Islami, Sohail is a militant Islamist who was sentenced to death in absentia for his part in the 8 May 2002 suicide bombing of the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi, which took the lives of 14 people, including 11 French engineers. He has also reportedly confessed involvement in a planned December 2003 bomb attack against President Pervez Musharraf in Rawalpindi, northern Pakistan.
