KSM might have killed Daniel Pearl, but it was someone else who lured him to his death

Omar Saeed Sheikh at his arrest in 2002 (courtesy of BBC)

KSM's confession that he murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, because he thought he was working for the CIA or Israeli intelligence made me want to review the press reports about the person who actually lured Daniel Pearl to his death, Omar Saeed Sheikh.

He was an interesting person, I recalled, in that he was a middle-class Pakistani who had been raised in Britain. He even attended the London School of Economics and his sister went to Oxford University.

Daniel Pearl came into contact with Omar Sheikh when he went to Karichi, Pakistan in 2002 in search of Sheik Mubari Ali Gilani, the alleged spiritual leader of Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber.

At the time, Omar Sheikh, 28, had already served years in Indian prison for having kidnapped four Westerners in Delhi. He befriended his victims over chess and tea in Delhi.

"We've just told the press we're going to behead you," one of his hostages recalled him saying. Omar Sheikh, at the time a 21-year-old student, "was laughing, the prospect excited him," the hostage said.

He was released in 1999 in an exchange for 160 passengers of an Indian Airlines flight that had been hijacked by his fellow militants en route from Katmandu. He married a university graduate in 2000 and together they had a child.

In 2002, now free, Saeed was once again prowling for kidnapping victims when a militant pal told him about this American journalist, Daniel Pearl, who was trying to establish contact with Gilani.

Omar Sheikh immediately seized on the opportunity to meet Pearl and after assessing how trusting he was, Saeed decided that the American journalist would be the perfect vehicle to bring him the international attention he so craved.

To build Pearl's confidence, Saeed began exchanging emails with him, even asking after the health of his pregnant wife.

While pretending to be working out the logistics of a meeting with Gilani, Omar Sheikh was in reality assembling a crew of people that would help him with the abduction.

We now know that one of these coconspirators was KSM, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.