Death of Pakistani Adds To Pearl Murder Mystery

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- A Pakistani man who was believed by his family to have been detained in connection with the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl died Friday, weeks after he was left unconscious outside his home, his family said.

 

Saud Memon, a 44-year-old cloth merchant, owned the shed and land in the outskirts of the southern port of Karachi where Mr. Pearl's body was recovered after he was kidnapped and killed in 2002. Pakistani security officials allege that Mr. Memon was the chief financier of an outlawed Pakistani militant group, Harkat-ul-Mujahidee n, which supports al Qaeda. His family says he had no ties to terrorism and wasn't involved in Mr. Pearl's kidnapping or murder.

 

Pakistani authorities said at the time of Mr. Pearl's murder that they wanted to question Mr. Memon but couldn't find him. His house in Nazimabad, a middle-class district in central Karachi, was sealed by authorities. Pakistani authorities never acknowledged his detention or presented him before a court. No one from Pakistan's security agencies was available to comment yesterday evening.

 

But Mr. Memon's elder brother Mohammed Mahmood, in a telephone interview, said Mr. Memon was arrested in March 2003 in South Africa, where he was pursuing his textiles business. Mr. Mahmood claimed his brother was in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and was later taken to the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan declined to comment.

Mr. Mahmood said the family was told by Pakistani inmates who were recently released from Guantanamo that Mr. Memon was detained at Guantanamo. Mr. Memon was handed over to Pakistani authorities in 2006, according to his family and Defense of Human Rights, a nongovernmental organization campaigning for the release of missing persons.

 

Mr. Memon's name doesn't appear on a Defense Department list that a Pentagon spokesman says includes "every single person that's ever been detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo" from the prison's opening in January 2002 to May 15, 2006. Other U.S. agencies may have held prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

 

A military official familiar with detainee policy said he had not heard of Mr. Memon but, given the allegations against him, had he entered U.S. custody, "this is not somebody we would have had at Guantanamo. He could have been somewhere else."

 

Mr. Memon was found lying unconscious outside his house by neighbors on April 28. The day before, Amina Masood, a spokeswoman for DHR, told the Pakistan Supreme Court that some men released by the Pakistan Army had seen him in detention. She was speaking in court in a case brought by DHR that is challenging the disappearances of terror suspects allegedly detained by Pakistan's intelligence agencies.

Pakistani law and army officials refused to provide any information on him to the Supreme Court. Mr. Memon died at the Liaquat National Hospital in Karachi on Friday, according to his family.

 

"We don't know who had been holding him for the past more than four years, but my brother had nothing to do with al Qaeda or Daniel Pearl's murder," Mr. Mahmood said. He acknowledged that his brother owned the compound where Mr. Pearl was found, along with other pieces of real estate around the city. A doctor at the hospital said Mr. Memon died of tuberculosis and meningitis.

Mr. Pearl, 38, was kidnapped from Karachi in January 2002, while researching a story on terrorism. Three months later, police found his body buried in a nursery owned by Mr. Memon. Pakistani and U.S. investigators say the reporter was killed by militants.

 

The kidnapping was conceived and organized by British militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh. A Pakistani antiterrorism court convicted and sentenced him to death. He challenged the conviction in the High Court in Karachi. Mr. Sheikh remains in jail. Three others were given life imprisonment.

 

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a senior al Qaeda leader now being held at Guantanamo Bay, confessed to killing Mr. Pearl, according to a partial Pentagon transcript of his testimony before a military tribunal. The White House has declined to provide details of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's statements during his interrogation, beyond the transcript released several weeks ago, or to specify the evidence that leads investigators to believe his confession in the Pearl case is accurate.