Washington, May 10 (HS): As the victims of the terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, during India’s Operation Sindoor are acknowledged, former Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Q. Nomani’s eyes are filled with tears of joy as justice has finally been served for American journalist Daniel Pearl, who was killed by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002. Pearl was also associated with the Wall Street Journal. After Daniel’s murder in Karachi, Asra Nomani, the founder of the non-profit Pearl Project, said, Thank you, India.
Nomani has uploaded a long post on her official X handle regarding Operation Sindoor. She expressed relief at the news of the death of Abdul Rauf Asghar, the brother of Masood Azhar, the leader of Jaish-e-Mohammed, in the operation. He was the person who had previously kidnapped her fellow journalist, Daniel Pearl, from Karachi. Pearl was later taken to Bahawalpur, where he was beheaded. Omar Saeed Sheikh was also involved in Pearl’s murder. Omar Saeed Sheikh was released after the Kandahar hijacking, with Abdul Rauf Azhar playing a significant role in this release.
Nomani wrote, I had heard the name Bahawalpur for the first time at the end of January 2002 after Pearl’s murder. Since then, the name Bahawalpur has sent chills down my spine. After that, I took it upon myself to expose Pakistan. I continued to write for 23 years that Pakistan’s intelligence agency and top military commanders use Bahawalpur in the southern province of Punjab to harbor domestic terrorists. When I heard about India’s Operation Sindoor in Pakistan, the name Bahawalpur resurfaced on my lips. It brought tears to my eyes to know that the terrorists killed in Bahawalpur during Operation Sindoor included Pearl’s murderer.
In her X post, she mentions the year 2001. According to Nomani, Pearl had traveled to Bahawalpur in December of that year with a notebook and a pen. General Pervez Musharraf had promised to shut down Pakistan’s terrorist groups following the attack on the Indian Parliament. The Wall Street Journal had then sent Pearl to Karachi, where he reported from terrorist hideouts in Bahawalpur. He took this risk knowing that his life could be in danger from the terrorists. Asra wrote, Daniel sent me an email saying he was eager to go to Afghanistan, but he was not eager to die.
Asra has written, She was also reporting from Karachi at that time. Pearl began living with me in a rented house in Karachi. On January 23, 2002, he left this house for an interview. The intermediary Asif Farooqi had arranged an interview through a person named Arif. Pearl did not know that Arif worked for the terrorist group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. It was also Arif’s hometown, Bahawalpur. He wrote that after Pearl’s murder, pressure on Pakistan increased, so Arif’s family staged his funeral and sent him on a bus to Muzaffarabad on the other side of Pakistan.
According to Noorani, it was Arif who handed over Pearl to the British-Pakistani Omar Sheikh. He had become radicalized in London mosques in the 1990s and went to Pakistan to receive training in these terrorist training camps. He then kidnapped tourists in India. He was caught and imprisoned, but on December 31, 1999, he was released in exchange for hostages during the hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814 alongside the leader of Pakistani terrorists, Masood Azhar. It is a matter of relief that several members of Masood Azhar’s family were killed in Bahawalpur during India’s Operation Sindoor.
Journalist Asra states that the Pakistani army and intelligence agencies use terrorists as weapons against India. She emphasized that it is Pakistan’s duty to destroy terrorist bases.
Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar
