A Pakistan Taliban terrorist — the last remaining fugitive sought in the 2002 murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl — has reportedly been taken into custody.
In a report by The Media Line, posted by the Jerusalem Post, counter-terrorism officials in Islamabad, Pakistan, confirmed that Azim Jan, a commander of the Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan, an offshoot of al-Qaeda, was nabbed last Friday in a joint operation headed by Pakistan Security Forces.
The mission was conducted in a hilly area about 100 miles north of the capital, the report stated.
Also apprehended during the operation was Pakistan Taliban militant Muhammad Anwar, Economic Times reported. Anwar was the mastermind behind an attack on the Daewoo Bus terminal in Peshawar, the news outlet reported.
“I welcome any steps toward exposing and bringing to justice those horrendous murderers,” Pearl’s father, Judea Pearl, told The Media Line.
The news outlet, citing an unnamed source, reported Jan was the master trainer of suicide bombers and that he was running a terrorist training camp in the Pakistan-Afghani border when he was arrested.
Pearl was the South Asian bureau chief of the Journal when he was kidnapped and beheaded by a self-proclaimed Islamist group in the southern city of Karachi in 2002.
At the time, he was investigating the alleged financing of al-Qaeda through Pakistani terrorists, and also trying to find links between Pakistani terrorist groups and Richard Reid, who became known as the “shoe bomber” after allegedly trying to blow up an airplane during a flight by using a bomb hidden his shoe.
In February 2002, police arrested Ahmed Omer Saeed Sheikh, a British-born Pakistani and a member of various terrorist organizations. He was held along with his three close aides: Salman Saqib, Fahad Naseem, and Sheikh Aadil.
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