Profile: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, or Sheikh Omar for his followers, may have been languishing in jail for kidnapping and killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, but the militants who he inspired have not forgotten him.
These militants planned a jail break in February 2016, 14 years after he was sentenced to death and sent to jail. Their aim, according to the then Pakistani military spokesperson, was to free 100 high-profile terrorists, including Sheikh, from the Hyderabad prison.
They had executed 90% of their plan but the attempt was foiled by the intelligence agencies, then ISPR DG Asim Saleem Bajwa told reporters in Karachi on February 12, 2016.
According to Bajwa, the militants had planned to carry out suicide attacks and ram explosives-laden vehicles into two entrances of the Hyderabad prison.
Sheikh, one of the most high-profile figures in jihadi circles, was born in the UK in 1974. His family had moved to Lahore in 1987 where he attended the Aitchison College. According to reports, he was expelled for bad behaviour. He then returned to the UK and studied at the London School of Economics for two years.
Sheikh had a deep affection for Jihad-e-Kashmir. In his early years in the militant world, he had worked with Fazlur Rehman Khalil’s banned Harkatul Mujahideen.
During his stint with the group, Sheikh had successfully entered India-held Kashmir in the 1990s where he had orchestrated kidnappings of western tourists. He was arrested by Indian security forces during an operation in 1997.
Sheikh remained incarcerated in an Indian jail till December 1999. He was released along with Maulana Masood Azhar and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar after the Harkatul Mujahideen hijacked an Indian airliner and demanded their release.
Following his release, Sheikh co-founded the anti-India Jaish-e-Mohammad group with Maulana Masood Azhar in 2002.
According to reports, he had also spent some time in Afghanistan where he developed links with Arab militants and members of al-Qaeda.
In February 2002, Sheikh was arrested by Pakistani security agencies for the killing of Daniel Pearl, 38, the South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal. Pearl was abducted in Karachi in January 2002 while doing a story on militants.
An anti-terrorism court sentenced Sheikh to death but his lawyers appealed the verdict in higher courts.
Even Pakistani jail couldn’t stop Sheikh from making an attempt to bring Pakistan and India to the brink of war. In November 2008, at least 10 members of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba carried out attacks in India’s Mumbai, killing over 150 people.
Slain Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, who was killed by the CIA in Abbottabad, had supported the attacks in Mumbai after Ilyas Kashmiri, one of his key commanders, told him of LeT’s plan to carry out a massacre in India’s financial hub, Pakistani journalist Azaz Syed writes in his book “The Secrets of Pakistan’s War on Al-Qaeda”.
A few days after the Mumbai attacks, Syed wrote in his book, a man pretending to be the Indian defence minister had called then Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and the army chief, threatening them with severe consequences of the attacks in Mumbai. The man also tried to make calls to the Indian and US leaders but the attempts failed. The calls were meant to provoke an India-Pakistan war but the CIA helped Pakistan foil the plan.
According to Syed, the calls were made by Omar Saeed Sheikh from the Hyderabad prison cell. The intelligence agencies had carried out a search operation in the jail and found over 150 SIM cards and a cell phone from his cell.
What happened after that is still a secret but one thing is clear that even in jail, Omar was still an important figure in militant circles and was in contact with al-Qaeda.
In 2011, a report released by the Pearl Project at Georgetown University following an investigation said that the wrong men had been convicted for Pearl’s murder. According to AFP, the investigation claimed the alleged mastermind of September 11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was behind the murder, not Omar Sheikh. KSM was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and is being held in Guantanamo Bay.
On April 2, the Sindh High Court commuted Sheikh’s death sentence to a seven-year imprisonment for kidnapping Pearl. He has been in jail for the past 18 years. His seven-year sentence will be counted from the time he was sent to prison after being convicted.
His lawyer Khawaja Naveed told SAMAA Digital that Sheikh could be released in a day or two.