Pearl assassin plots Musharraf hit from Pakistan prison cell

How effective are Pakistan’s prisons?  That question may have an answer in the latest terrorist plot uncovered by Pakistani intelligence.  The man behind the brutal murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl put together a plot to assassinate former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf from behind bars:

In a sensational development, authorities have claimed busting a clandestine terror network set up by jailed killer of Daniel Pearl inside the Hyderabad Jail and the Sindh government has suspended senior police and jail officials after a large number of cell phones, SIMs and other equipment were recovered.

Highly-placed Interior Ministry sources confided to The News on Wednesday the jailed terrorist had also threatened Gen Pervez Musharraf on his personal cell phone in the second week of November and planned to get him eliminated by a suicide bomber.

The caller reportedly told the former president: “I am after you, get ready to die.” Subsequent investigations by the authorities revealed the threatening phone call was made by someone from the Hyderabad Central Jail. Being a suspect, Sheikh Omar was placed under observation before it transpired that he was the one who had threatened the former strongman.

The authorities came to know that a plot had been hatched by Sheikh Omar to eliminate the then-president with the connivance of some Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) militants, with whom he had long been in touch over the phone.

Bill Roggio, whose posts at the Weekly Standard blog are a must read, provides this analysis:

Omar Saeed Sheikh has a long pedigree in al Qaeda and various Pakistan-based terror groups. He is best known for the brutal murder and beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Omar was involved in funding the September 11 attacks; he wired more than $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the tactical commander of the September 11 attacks. Atta then sent money not used in the operation back to Omar.

Omar also is a close associate of Maulana Masood Aktar, the leader of the Jaish-e-Mohammed terror group. Omar and Aktar were freed from Indian custody in 1999 after terrorists hijacked an Indian Airline flight and forced it to land in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He also has close links to the Kashmiri terror group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, the Taliban, and of course Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency. After the murder of Pearl, Omar is said to have turned himself in to his ISI handler. It is believed Omar’s death sentence has not been carried out because of his connections with the ISI.

What’s the difference between a Pakistani prison and a terrorist training camp?  The weather’s better and the government feeds you. Seriously, imprisonment did nothing to impede Omar’s efforts to conduct terrorism and assassination around the world.  Investigators found three mobile phones with 18 different SIM cards, allowing Omar to communicate over every available cellular network available.  Phone records show him making calls to his jihadist allies in terror networks, as well as keeping up with family and friends.

These discoveries led to the suspension of prison officials.  That may give small comfort to those who assumed Omar had been neutralized by his jail sentence.  It gives even less confidence in Pakistan’s house detention of Lashkar-e-Taiba figures suspected of involvement in the Mumbai attacks last month.  How many SIM cards and mobile phones do they have with which to conduct terrorist business under the noses of the sympathetic law-enforcement agencies of Pakistan?

In the next administration, we will begin debating the fate of terrorist suspects detained at Guantanamo Bay now and captured in the future as we fight radical Islamist terrorism.  Some will demand that they either get housed here and treated like regular criminals or released to their home countries for detention.  If this is what we can expect from Pakistan, we’d better come up with a more effective Plan C.

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