New Delhi: India’s Operation Sindoor and reports of the alleged killing of senior Jaish-e- Mohammad (JeM) commander Abdul Rauf Azhar have brought the name of slain journalist Daniel Pearl back into public conversation.
Pearl, a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter, was kidnapped and later beheaded by Al Qaeda leader Omar Saeed Sheikh in 2002 in Karachi. Azhar was his then-aide as part of JeM, and brought Pearl to him.
Although the Indian government has not officially confirmed Azhar’s death, the unverified reports have sparked a wave of emotional and political reactions from those closely connected to Pearl’s case.
Dr. Judea Pearl, father of the late reporter, responded to the news with a message on ‘X’. While acknowledging that Abdul Rauf Azhar was not directly involved in his son’s abduction, Dr. Pearl talked about Azhar’s critical role in orchestrating the 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814 that led to the release of Omar Saeed Sheikh—the British-Pakistani militant who ultimately lured Daniel Pearl into captivity.
“I want to thank all of you who reached out to me today in response to the news that India’s military forces have eliminated Abdul Rauf Azhar—a man described as ‘responsible for the kidnapping and murder of my son, Daniel,’” Judea wrote.
“I want to clarify: Azhar was a Pakistani extremist and leader of the terrorist organization Jaish-e-Mohammad. While his group was not directly involved in the plot to abduct Danny, it was indirectly responsible. Azhar orchestrated the hijacking that led to the release of Omar Sheikh—the man who lured Danny into captivity.”
However, as India’s military actions rippled through diplomatic and media circles, even in Israel—Jerusalem Post ran reports on Azhar’s killing—Pearl’s legacy remains central to the story, his father noted.
“Let Danny’s life remind us of who we are and what we stand for,” Judea concluded.
In a separate tweet, he later wrote: “I hope this incident will help refocus attention on two other criminals directly involved in Danny’s murder who have, so far, escaped justice: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Omar Sheikh”.
He also chose to highlight the post and work of Asra Nomani, a former WSJ colleague and friend of Daniel Pearl, who added layers of personal and investigative context in a widely shared post.
Nomani, on her part, traced the roots of Pearl’s fatal reporting trip to the town of Bahawalpur, then a known hub for extremist activity in southern Punjab. It was Nomani’s house from where Pearl last left “with a notebook and a pen” to meet a militant through his fixer who was allegedly involved with the Harkat Ul Mujahideen, she posted.
“Bahawalpur.” I still have chills in my heart from when I first heard that town’s name in late January 2002”, her tweet begins before narrating the larger story.
“When I heard India bombed training camps in Pakistan this week in Operation Sindoor, in response to a Pakistani terrorist rampage in India’s Kashmir state, I had one city’s name on my lips: Bahawalpur. Did India bomb Bahawalpur? It did. I knew then India was striking actual hubs for Pakistan’s homegrown domestic terrorism. Why do I know? My friend, WSJ reporter Danny Pearl, went to Bahawalpur in December 2001 with a notebook and a pen. Gen. Pervez Musharraf had just promised he was shutting down Pakistan’s militant groups after a strike by Pakistan’s terrorists against the Parliament in India, and Danny reported on the militant offices in Bahawalpur. He literally knocked on their doors,” she said on ‘X’.
“Around that time, Danny sent me an email: “I’m anxious to go to Afghanistan, but I’m not anxious to die.” What did Danny learn? The militant training camps were open for business in Bahawalpur. On Jan. 23, 2002, Danny left a home I had rented in Karachi, Pakistan, for an interview. I learned Danny’s fixer, Asif Farooqi, had arranged an interview for Danny through a man named “Arif.” Danny didn’t know it but Arif was the PR man for a militant group, Harkat Ul Mujahideen. What was Arif’s hometown? Bahawalpur…Arif had handed Danny off to Omar Sheikh, a British-Pakistani dropout from the London School of Economics, radicalized in the 1990s in London mosques,” she added.
Nomani, who now runs the Pearl Project, started in 2007 in memory of Daniel Pearl, added further commentary on Pakistan’s role in fostering homegrown terrorism in her long post.
“Did Pakistan jail Omar Sheikh and Masood Azhar when they returned to Pakistan with a third terrorist, freed from India’s jails? No. Pakistan’s military and intelligence gave them safe passage. They used them as weapons against India. But in fact these domestic terrorists have waged war against innocents in Pakistan, like civil society activists, Benazir Bhutto, Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, schoolchildren and countless others. Their extremism has ruined Pakistan, and Pakistanis can’t blame America for creating the mujahideen to fight the Soviets in the 1980s. Pakistan has had a duty to dismantle those terrorist bases — for even the safety of its own people,” she wrote on ‘X’.
What India is doing is a strategic attack on terrorist bases Pakistani military and intelligence should have eliminated but never did in their obsession to take over Kashmir, she added.
Among other voices, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Zalmay Khalilzad welcomed the reported strike. “Justice has been served,” he wrote in a post, calling Azhar “the brutal terrorist assassin…whose psychopathic beheading of Daniel Pearl in 2002 we all remember,” he posted on ‘X’
In a briefing Friday, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) addressed reports on the Bahawalpur attacks but did not confirm anything on Azhar.
“Bahawalpur is the headquarters of the proscribed terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammad; its leader Maulana Masood Azhar, is a proscribed terrorist individual. The Jaish was directly or indirectly responsible for the death of Daniel Pearl but the real connection is through Omar Sayeed Sheikh, the British Pakistani jihadi who was held in India but was finally released in 2000 and he was the person who lured Daniel Pearl, eventually leading to his murder,” Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said. “These are all connected institutions and the attack on Bahawalpur facility is a fitting part of this unfortunate incident.”
Who was Daniel Pearl?
Pearl, the WSJ South Asia bureau chief in 2002, was particularly drawn to exploring the intersections of culture, conflict, and politics in the Islamic world, according to a February 2002 WSJ obituary.
His articles focused on the U.S. bombing of a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant and how al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden financed terrorism through trade in Tanzanite gemstones, among others.
Nomani, in a tweet, also shared an article written by Daniel Pearl in January 2002, where he talked about how “Militant groups in Pakistan thrive despite crackdown,” where he detailed active recruitment centres run by Masood Azhar.
Pearl’s abduction and murder had wide-reaching implications. The then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, speaking from Washington after the kidnapping, suggested that extremist factions may have targeted Pearl to destabilise his government in response to the crackdown on terrorism. “Maybe it’s my actions of moving against extremism,” he had then said.
“Those who engage in criminal, barbaric acts need to know that these crimes only hurt their cause,” the then US president George W. Bush had said.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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