Sheikh Omar Saeed

From 9/11 Encyclopedia:

Officially the mastermind behind the killing of Wall Street Journalist Daniel Pearl. Omar Saeed Sheikh is widely believed in Pakistan 
to be an experienced ISI "asset" with a history of operations in Kashmir. But Sheikh is also known as Mustafa Mohamed Ahmad
aka Mustapha Ahmad Al-Hawsawi (->) and was already mentioned in a public transcript of the trial on the Kenia Embassy Bombings from 1998,
which was online since February 2001. Under his alias Al-Hawsawi, as mentioned in the indictment of Moussaoui, Habib Zacarias
(->, he wired $100.000 to the official ringleader of the September 11th attack, Mohammad Atta 
from an saudi arabian account of Standard Chartered Bank.

This was okayed by the ISI and was one of the reason, why former head of intelligence, Massoud, had to resign on October 6th, 2001. 
If Saeed really was behind the killing of Pearl or just had been used as a scapegoat to whitewash the Atta-story wasn't investigated yet. 
Fact is, that Saeed wasn't the top suspect. First it was reported, that Jamat Al-Fuqra around Syed Mubarak Jilani or 
Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) headed by Qari Saifullah Akhtar, both close to the ISI, had been behind his kidnapping 
(kidnapperguy@hotmail.com). 

Then, three other suspects had been arrested: Fahad Naseem, former policeman Sheikh Mohammed Adeel and Salman Saquib. 

Added to that list: Mansur Hasnain aka Sunny Ahmed Qazi alias 'Burger', who is believed to have orchestrated the December 1999 hijacking 
of Indian Airlines plane, IC-814 from Kathmandu to Kandahar. But Mohammad 'Burger' was among the attackers on the Indian Parliament 
on December 13, 2001 and has been subsequently killed. During early 2002, it became clear, that Sheikh Saeed tried to whistleblow 
on his prior knowledge on September 11th. This was obviously the reason, why he was already detained,
before the dead body of Daniel Pearl was found, on February 5th, 2002.
Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-021402pearl.story

Due to Richard Baer, Pearls real interest of his story was never Richard Reid, Pearl wanted to meet Saeed. Pearl met Khalid Khawaja, 
an aging former Pakistani intelligence official who counts himself a close friend and confidant of Osama bin Laden. Khawaja
served as a source for Pearl.

He found out too much, maybe even a handful of truth around September 11th and therefore had to die. 
Sheikh claimed in a march 2002 interrogation, that he had personally met Atta, Mohammad, during one of his visits to Kandahar
and knew of the plans for the September 11 strikes. He had told Lt.Gen. Ehsanul-Haq, the present DG of the ISI,
who was then a Corps Commander at Peshawar, and Gen. Aziz Khan about it. 
Source: http://www.saag.org/papers5/paper424.html

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