KARACHI, 18 February 2004 — Pakistani police have arrested two militants, including one suspected of involvement in the kidnap and killing of US reporter Daniel Pearl, an officer said yesterday.

The two men, Sajid Jabbar and Mohammad Athar, were arrested in an overnight raid in the port city of Karachi and belong to the outlawed Lashkar-e-Jhangvi group, Fayyaz Leghari, chief of the investigation branch of Karachi police, told Reuters.

Another senior officer, who did not want to be identified, said Jabbar was suspected of involvement in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Pearl in 2002 as well as several other militant attacks. “He carries a reward of 500,000 rupees ($8,700) on his head,” the officer said. He said Jabbar was a close associate of Asif Ramzi, another suspect in the murder of Pearl, who blew himself up while making bombs in Karachi in December 2002.

Leghari said Jabbar and Athar were suspected of planning fresh attacks in Karachi. “We have seized a huge amount of weapons and explosives from their possession,” he said.

Athar was the chief of the Sindh provincial wing of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and wanted for at least 10 separate terror attacks, including sending parcel bombs to senior police officers.

“Their arrest is a big success for the police and a blow to the terrorists,” Leghari said. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which has ties with the Taleban which formerly ruled Afghanistan and the Al-Qaeda network of Osama Bin Laden, is also blamed for a May 2002 suicide bombing in Karachi in which 11 French technicians and three Pakistanis were killed.

Pearl was kidnapped and murdered in Karachi in early 2002 while researching a story on militants against a backdrop of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

A British-born militant, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was sentenced to death in July 2002 for masterminding his murder. Omar has denied the charge and lodged an appeal.

The Sindh High Court yesterday asked the government to explain why Omar had been shifted to a jail in the northern city of Rawalpindi. Omar, who previously was in a prison in southern Hyderabad, was flown to Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail last month.

The two-judge bench hearing Omar’s appeal against his conviction issued the order after defense lawyer Abdul Waheed Katpar demanded his client be produced in court, fearing that he may have been tortured. “I requested... the medical examination of Omar as he may have been tortured in Rawalpindi. However, the court wants to examine the shifting order before deciding on his medical examination,” Katpar said.

Public prosecutor Habib Ahmed said he submitted a letter from the Hyderabad prison chief saying Omar had been shifted on the orders of the federal government.