By Murali Krishnan, IANS,
Lillehammer (Norway) : She heads what is often referred to in the university as the bravest class in town. For over a year now, Asra Nomani, a journalist and activist who teaches at Georgetown University, wants to finish the work the FBI started – trying to track down the killers of Daniel Pearl.
Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter, was kidnapped and beheaded by Islamic radicals in Pakistan in early 2002, a few months after the 9/11 attacks.
Called the Pearl Project, which has already drawn over 20 students, mostly female, from as far away as Qatar and Lebanon, the investigation is trying to figure out the real identities of 15 of the estimated 19 suspects still at large. Many of them were previously known only by aliases.
The next task of the project members is to determine their whereabouts.
Though four men have been convicted of the murder in Pakistan, including Omar Sheikh, Nomani is not convinced that the whole story has been told. Sheikh, who once studied at the London School of Economics, was freed along with two other Islamic militants, in exchange for more than 160 people aboard an Indian Airlines jet that had been hijacked from Kathmandu, Nepal, in December 1999.
Another man, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an Al Qaeda terrorist who is currently in US custody for masterminding the 9/11 attacks, has claimed he personally killed Pearl. Nomani’s class is looking into whether he’s telling the truth or trying to thwart investigators.
“I am confident that the whole truth will be out. It’s going to take some time and I am using networks and journalists who can help in piecing together the case,” Nomani told IANS while making a presentation on her project at the global investigative journalism conference here.
“The FBI says this is an open investigation, but in talking to officials it’s clear there’s no work being done on the ground,” adds the feisty Nomani, who was born in India but later migrated to America with her family.
For Nomani, there is a bigger story why she has taken on this investigation and monitors it so closely. She was a close friend of Pearl and the two worked together for nearly a decade at the paper. Besides, she was one of the last people to see her best friend.
Nomani also figures prominently in the acclaimed film, “A Mighty Heart”, starring Angelina Jolie – a film that captures the dark days surrounding Pearl’s abduction and murder.
“Actually I would be happy if you can help me get minute details of the kidnapping case in which Sheikh was involved in India and the name of the policemen who handled the investigation,” says Nomani.
Sheikh played a major role in raising funds and organising support for the Islamist group Harkat-ul-Ansar in Britain.
In October 1994, he organised the kidnapping of four foreign tourists from a hotel in New Delhi’s Paharganj area to secure the release of Jaish-e-Mohammed leader Masood Azhar.
All the hostages were subsequently rescued from Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, in a joint operation by Delhi and Uttar Pradesh police commandos. One police official, Inspector Abhay Singh Yadav, was killed in the operation.
Nomani says her team has had some successes. For instance, they managed to get their hands on the full-length version of the video of Pearl’s murder – not the edited version that the terrorists released.
According to her, in the longer video format, the hands and feet of the killers are visible, along with other details that could prove useful in identifying the culprits.
“Yes, I am thinking of going to Pakistan to dig for more information once I have made substantial headway,” Nomani says. “The whole project is on the spirit of Danny. I owe him this much.”
She laughingly points out to what one of her students said about the project they were working on – “We are not trying to study history in class, we’re trying to make history”.
(Murali Krishnan can be contacted at [email protected])