Lahore, Pakistan – Police and intelligence agents today arrested a suspected militant who was wanted for a role in the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, officials said.
The man, identified as Hashim Qadeer, was captured from a bus at a terminal in the eastern Pakistan city of Gujranwala, a police and an intelligence official said on condition of anonymity. Both requested anonymity because they are not authorized to make media statements.
Pearl was kidnapped and later beheaded in the southern Pakistan city of Karachi while he was researching a story on Islamic militancy in 2002.
Months later, a court in Karachi convicted four Islamic militants in Pearl’s killing, including British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was sentenced to death. The three others were given life imprisonment.
The Karachi-based intelligence official said Qadeer is believed to have arranged a meeting between Sheikh and Pearl at a hotel in Rawalpindi, a city near the capital of Islamabad.
Two other militants wanted in Pearl’s case were killed in shootouts with security forces last year. Five others remained at large, and Qadeer was one of them, the police official said.
In 2003, authorities listed Qadeer among the country’s 40 most-wanted men.
