Multan, May 29: An Islamic militant accused of helping to plan the kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was arrested at a bus station in central Pakistan today, police said. The suspect, Qari Abdul Hai, who allegedly had close ties with the Taliban, is the chief of a banned militant group condemned by the United States as a terrorist organisation, police said. The group has been accused many bus and church bombings in Pakistan.
Most of the group's leaders have either been arrested, killed in police confrontations or gone underground. Its former chief, Riaz Basra, was killed in May 2002 in a shootout with police in a village in the eastern province of Punjab.
Malik said there was a USD 34,485 reward for Hai's arrest and that he had been linked to the murders of many Shiite Muslims in different parts of the country in recent years.
Hai had close links with the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Malik said. Bureau Report