Ahmar Mustikhan
Friday, March 14, 2003

The ISI physically threatened Sehbai, then the editor of The News in Islamabad, to stop him from publishing that report but failed. Amid growing insecurity Sehbai fled to U.S. safety. But family members are still being persecuted back home, media officials in that country have confirmed.

The second case of ISI's persecution is that of Ghulam Hasnain, one of Pakistan's most successful journalists, who was working for a number of international outlets, including CNN and Time.

Hasnain was picked up by the ISI just a day before Daniel Pearl's kidnapping and released two days later, "after they got a suicide note signed from him," a well-informed Pakistani journalist told this scribe. Shell-shocked, to this day Hasnain has not come out publicly about that ordeal.

Hasnain, whose scoops in recent years made him one of the country's richest journalists – he was making as much as $3,000 a day – had done an exposé of India's wanted fugitive and smuggling don Dawood Ebrahim in Pakistan's respected investigative monthly, the Newsline.

That investigative report bared the nightlong playboy extravaganzas, gambling and sex orgies of Ebrahim at his palatial mansions in Pakistan's port city of Karachi. Ebrahim's lavish parties as a matter of routine culminate with Muslim prayers before dawn, Hasnain reported for the Newsline.

The abduction/slaying of Pearl, harassment of Sehbai and kidnapping of Hasnain were all intricately linked, though their connections evaded media attention. The three gruesome incidents that occurred, one after another, strikingly had common denominators: al-Qaeda, Pakistan's spy service ISI, and a transnational smuggling ring connected to both organizations. "Criminal enterprises have also serviced the spread of terrorism. Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh – convicted of the abduction and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl – linked up with Aftab Ansari, a prominent figure in the Indian mafia, to provide al-Qaeda with recruits, false documents, safe houses, and proceeds from kidnappings, drug trafficking, prostitution, and other criminal activities," the Washington Institute reports adds.

The connections are mind-boggling: One of Pearl's killers, ISI-backed Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, was comrade-in-arms with India-based terrorist Aftab Ansari; Aftab Ansari, in turn, was linked to mafia don Dawood Ebrahim.

Aftab Ansari was involved in a number of serious terrorism cases including the attack on the American Center in Calcutta, India, in January last year that left five dead. He was arrested in Dubai and deported to India.

When contacted by this scribe on phone in Virginia, dissident editor Shaheen Sehbai said the common denominator in all three cases, Pearl's death and his and Ghulam Hasnain's persecution, could be the ISI. "Of course, it was the ISI who came after me," he said.

Asked whether Gen. Pervez Musharraf does not know exactly where bin Laden is hiding or is simply powerless to capture him, Sehbai said: "As head of state, he is making a fool of himself in front of the world. One day he says bin Laden is dead, on another he says he is alive. It shows he is not in control."

Sehbai adds: "It is absolutely undeniable there [is] a big portion of the army that is extremely sympathetic to the religious extremists. Whenever Musharraf says or does anything, he has to keep this factor in mind."

In the same breath, Sehbai is of the view that bin Laden has powerful sympathetic elements within Pakistan's army and concurs it is well nigh impossible for the high-profile terrorist mastermind to hide in Pakistan without their support.

"Whether bin Laden is in any remote area or in a Pakistan city, an army camp or fort, none can protect him better than the soldiers," Sehbai said.

Daniel Pearl's ‘Mistake’

Along with Robert Block and Ann Zimmerman, Daniel Pearl was one of the first U.S. journalists to expose al-Qaeda's smuggling operations in a Nov. 16, 2001, Wall Street Journal (WSJ) write-up entitled "Much-smuggled gem aids al-Qaeda–Bought, sold by militants near mine, tanzanite ends up as Mideast souks."

That report detailed the smuggling of the blue gem called tanzanite, second only in popularity to sapphire in the U.S. market. Pearl's report reads, "U.S. law-enforcement officials have identified Dubai as a haven for al-Qaeda business interests. The FBI and the Treasury Department are currently trying to help the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a part, to crack down on the abuse of Dubai's free-trade zones by terrorists and criminals.

"While this effort mainly focuses on gold smuggling, the U.S. also has reports that al-Qaeda uses tanzanite as a way to move funds around the world, says a U.S. government investigator familiar with Dubai."

In a follow-up report in the WSJ on Dec. 10, 2002. Robert Block points out that agents also are investigating leads that militant Islamist groups are smuggling gold, diamonds and cash through South African ports to Dubai and Pakistan.

But if al-Qaeda needs professional help for its smuggling operations from Dubai, there is none better than Dawood Ebrahim. Ebrahim rose from Bombay's dirt streets to become a rising star in Dubai's officially allowed smuggling enterprises in the late 1980s.

He appears to be linked with global Islamic militancy since the blasts that left 300 dead in 1993 in India's port city of Bombay. Under pressure from New Delhi, he was asked by the rulers of Dubai to leave their country and was immediately welcomed by India's arch foe, Pakistan.

In one of the best reportages on Daniel Pearl's kidnap-slaying, in a Vanity Fair article entitled "The Journalist and the Terrorist," veteran journalist Robert Sam Anson underscores Pearl's exposés of links between the ISI and an Islamist "humanitarian" organization accused of leaking nuclear secrets to bin Laden.

That organization, named Ummah Tameer-i-Nau (UTN) had Gen. Hamid Gul as its chief patron. According to Anson, Pearl was eager to cram in an exposé on Dawood Ibrahim for the WSJ just prior to his abduction-saying.

Read Part I: Pakistani Spymasters Protect bin Laden

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
War on Terrorism

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