Author: AFP
Publication: www.expatica.com
Date: April 28, 2003
URL: http://www.expatica.com/france.asp?pad=278,313,&item_id=30830
Daniel Pearl, the US reporter beheaded
in Karachi last year, was killed because he had discovered dangerous secrets
about Pakistani involvement in Islamic extremism, according to an investigation
by French philosopher and media personality Bernard-Henri Levy.
"He was the man who knew too much.
His work as a journalist took him down trails which he should probably
never have followed.
"Basically he was killed to stop
him writing an article," said Levy, author of "Who killed Daniel Pearl?"
which has just been published in France.
Pearl, who was 38, was kidnapped
in January 2002 while working on a story about Islamic militants for the
Wall Street Journal. His remains were found in May after a gruesome video
showing his murder was sent to a news agency in Karachi.
In a 525-page volume Levy retraces
the reporter's last steps in freedom, and the trap set for him by Omar
Sheikh, the British-born Islamic extremist - sentenced to death in Pakistan
for the murder last year - who forms the book's counter-theme.
According to Levy, Sheikh was acting
for the Pakistani intelligence services. "Pearl's assassin was not a fanatic
but an agent - a double-agent - of the Pakistani secret services, and also
of al-Qaeda," he told Le Figaro newspaper.
The reporter, who was lured into
captivity by the promise of an interview with leading Islamic militant
Mubarak Gilani, may have been about to expose how close al-Qaeda was to
acquiring nuclear weapons from supporters inside the Pakistani scientific
establishment, according to Levy.
Or he may have had information about
how relatively unknown Pakistani individuals such as Gilani were in fact
controlling al-Qaeda's apparent leader Osama bin Laden.
"My hypothesis is that bin Laden,
this scarecrow of whom we are quite rightly afraid, is in some respects
a puppet. He is there on stage but behind him are more secret, but more
important, individuals who are his inspiration. That was what Pearl discovered.
That was why he was killed," Levy said.
"Who killed Daniel Pearl?" is a
highly personalised account by the 54 year-old French author, who has written
extensively about the conflicts in Bosnia and Afghanistan and the emergence
of radical Islam as a challenge to western liberalism.
His journey takes him to California
to meet Pearl's family and to London - where Sheikh was educated at the
respected London School of Economics - as well as to Pakistan, Bosnia and
the Gulf.
"Radical Islam is as much to be
feared today as the communist and fascist totalitarianisms of yesterday
were," said Levy.
"Everything must be done to stop
a frontal collision between the west and Islam in general. The only war
of civilisations must be within Islam -- between the democrats and the
fascists."
