Pearl's killer ran terror network from jail

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus...0812181681.htm

12/18/2008

Islamabad (PTI): Authorities in Pakistan have claimed to have cracked a clandestine terror network set up by the jailed killer of American journalist Daniel Pearl who had also threatened to eliminate former President Pervez Musharraf by using a suicide car bomber.

The terror network was operating inside the Central Jail at Hyderabad in Sindh and the provincial government has suspended senior police and jail officials after a large number of cell phones, SIMs and other equipment were found in the prison, The News reported today.

Interior Ministry sources said Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, jailed for the murder of Pearl, had set up the network.

Sheikh, who was released by India along with Jaish-e- Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar and another terrorist in exchange for passengers on an Indian Airlines flight hijacked in 1999, had threatened Musharraf on his personal cell phone in the second week of November and planned to get him eliminated by a suicide bomber, they said.

The caller reportedly told Musharraf: "I am after you, get ready to die." Subsequent investigations revealed the call was made by someone from the Hyderabad Central Jail. Being a suspect, Sheikh was placed under observation and it transpired that he was the one who had threatened Musharraf.

The report said authorities had learnt that Sheikh hatched a plot to assassinate Musharraf with the connivance of some Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militants with whom he had been in touch over phone.

The militants were monitoring Musharraf's movements to target him while he travelled between his Army House residence in Rawalpindi and his farmhouse at Chak Shehzad in the suburbs of Islamabad.