US tried to arrest reporter's 'killer'

Washington secretly issued an arrest warrant for the chief suspect in the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl over the kidnapping of three British tourists, it was revealed last night.

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheik, 28, appeared today in a Karachi court where a judge ordered that he be detained for a further 14 days. It emerged that just before Mr Pearl's kidnapping US authorities had wanted to charge Sheikh with masterminding the 1994 abduction of the tourists in India.

All four, including a US citizen, were freed in a raid by Indian police in which Sheik was wounded and captured. He served five years in prison until hijackers held 155 airline passengers hostage in Afghanistan to secure his release.

A federal grand jury investigation last year indicted British-born Sheik, a former London School of Economics student, over the tourist kidnappings. US diplomats were pressurising the Pakistani government to arrest Sheik and extradite him nearly two weeks before Mr Pearl's kidnapping on 23 January.

Sheik, alleged leader of Jaish-e-Mohammed, surrendered to the Pakistani police on 5 February.