U.S. indicted suspected kidnapper last year

WASHINGTON -- The suspected mastermind in the abduction and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was secretly indicted last year by a federal grand jury for a foiled 1994 kidnapping, Newsweek magazine reported Sunday.

The charges brought in Washington in a grand jury indictment against Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh involved four Western tourists in India, the magazine said. One of the four was an American.

Taken into custody Feb. 5 in the Pearl case, Saeed told interrogators that his group wanted to teach the United States a lesson and Pearl's murder was just a first step, intelligence officials said in Pakistan.

In the abduction eight years ago, Indian authorities found the victims and imprisoned Saeed and his accomplices. Saeed's supporters won his release by hijacking an Indian airliner in 1999 and stabbing a passenger to death.

Justice Department officials pressed the National Security Council about extraditing Saeed to the United States, an administration official told The Associated Press Sunday.

Following that, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Wendy Chamberlin, raised the subject of extraditing Saeed Jan. 9 with the foreign minister, the official said.

Pearl was kidnapped Jan. 23. The next day FBI Director Robert Mueller and Chamberlin discussed Saeed at a previously scheduled meeting with Musharraf. But at that point there was no link between Pearl's kidnapping and Saeed, the official said.