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Daniel Pearl case "detenu" dies

Nirupama Subramanian

ISLAMABAD: A man allegedly involved in the Daniel Pearl killing case has died in hospital, a few days after he was mysteriously dumped outside his Karachi home by unidentified men.

Saud Memon, a 44-year-old textiles businessman, owned the property where Daniel Pearl's body was discovered. According to his family, the FBI picked up Memon in 2003 when he was on a visit to South Africa.

The family believes he was detained in Guantanamo Bay for two years before being transferred back to a Pakistani intelligence agency.

The Government did not acknowledge that he was in their custody. Earlier this month, Mr. Memon was produced before a Supreme Court bench hearing several petitions from families of persons missing since 2001.

President Pervez Musharraf has said many times the state was not involved in the disappearances of these people, and that they most likely joined jihadi groups.

But rights groups believe that intelligence agencies picked them for their alleged links with Al-Qaeda or Taliban and are detaining them illegally. They allege that some were even "sold" to the U.S. for bounty money.

Mr. Memon had to be carried to the court on a stretcher. Only a few days earlier, unidentified men had dumped him outside his Karachi home in bad shape. His family said he had lost his memory. The Government did not say anything in court about where he had been since he went missing in 2003. The judges observed that he was "a skeleton of a man who can neither walk nor hold his head" and ordered his hospitalisation. He weighed only 18 kg. He died on Friday in a Karachi hospital. Doctors said he died of meningitis and tuberculosis.Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was kidnapped during a visit to Karachi in 2002 and later killed.

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