The Indian foreign secretary Vikram Misri on Friday gave the seal to the terror camps in Bahawalpur’s link to the murder of Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Pearl.
One of the key terror camps destroyed by the Indian defence forces during Operation Sindoor in the early hours of May 7 was one Markaz Subhanallah in Bahawalpur.
The camp served as the headquarters of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM).
“Bahawalpur is the headquarters of Jaish-e-Mohammad proscribed by the United States. Maulana Masood Azhar is a proscribed individual. In the tragic killing of Daniel Pearl the JeM was in some way directly or indirectly involved,” Misri answered while replying to a question on Bahawalpur.
The Telegraph online had reported on Thursday that Indian-American writer-journalist Asma Nomani had made a long post on her X handle that threw light on Bahawalpur’s long association as a grooming ground for Pakistan’s homegrown terrorists.
“… the real connection is through Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the British-Pakistani jihadi held in India, but was released in 2000. He was the person who lured Daniel Pearl and eventually led to his killing. These are all connected figures, connected individuals and institutions. The attack on the Bahwalpur facility of JeM was a fitting part of this unfortunate incident,” Misri said.
In January 2002, Pearl was abducted in Karachi while on the way to interview a religious cleric. The video of his execution was released on February 8.
According to Nomani, a colleague and friend of the slain journalist, Pearl had visited Bahawalpur in the southern province of Pakistan’s Punjab in December 2001 and found militant training camps in the town.
A Pakistani national, who knew Pearl, had introduced him to one Arif, a resident of Bahawalpur who was suspected to have taken the journalist to Omar Sheikh. Sheikh was among the terrorists released with Masood Azhar after the IC814 hijack.