(JTA) — Pakistan has arrested the last terrorist wanted in the 2002 kidnapping and killing of Jewish-American journalist Daniel Pearl.
Azim Jan, a commander of the TTP, or the Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan, an offshoot of al-Qaeda, was arrested Friday, according to reports from The Media Line and The Nation, citing counterterrorism officials in Islamabad.
Jan was running a training camp for terrorists in the area of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border when he was arrested, according to The Media Line. He is the primary suspect in the Pearl murder, and is accused of being the mastermind of several deadly attacks in Pakistan in the past two decades.
Pearl was the South Asian bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal when he was kidnapped while on the way to interview a terrorist leader in Pakistan. He was later murdered by Islamist terrorists, who accused him of being an agent for the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency.
Pearl famously said before being beheaded by his captors in an act that was filmed and released to the public: “My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish.”
In February 2002, Ahmed Omer Saeed Sheikh, a British-born Pakistani who belonged to several terrorist organizations, and three aides were arrested in connection with Pearl’s death. Six months later they were found guilty.
Saeed Sheikh was sentenced to death by hanging, while the others each received 25-year prison terms. Their appeals are pending; Saeed Sheikh’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
