The Indian government announced on Thursday that its military had killed an Islamist terrorist who was involved in the murder Jewish-American journalist Daniel Pearl.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India's governing party, said that the Indian army killed Pakistani terrorist Abdul Rauf Azhar in "Operation Sindhoor."
A group of Islamist terrorists, including Azhar, kidnapped and murdered Pearl in 2002. The terrorist was affiliated with al-Qaeda and Jaish-e-Mohammed, an Islamist terror group that aims to separate Kashmir from India and fully incorporate it into Pakistan.
Who was Daniel Pearl, Jewish-American journalist?
Pearl was working as the South Asia bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal and was originally stationed in New Delhi. He moved to Karachi, Pakistan, to investigate terror after the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York City.
On January 23, 2002, Pearl was abducted by Islamist terrorists at a hotel in Karachi. His abductors, who called themselves the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, accused him of being an Israeli spy and sent the US a list of demands if they wanted Pearl freed.
The US government failed to meet the demands. In a video, Pearl stated he was Jewish and had visited Israel multiple times, moments before he was executed.
"My father's Jewish, my mother's Jewish, I'm Jewish. My family follows Judaism. Back in the town of Bnei Brak, there is a street named after my great grandfather, Chaim Pearl, who was one of the founders of the town." he said in the video.
India launched "Operation Sindoor" on Wednesday, which it claimed targeted "terrorist infrastructure." The operation was launched after Pakistani terrorists killed 26 Hindu tourists in Kashmir last month.
In the BJP announcement, the party said that Azhar was involved in a number of terror activities, including the 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight, the 2016 Pathankot Air Force base attack, and a 2001 terror attack on the Indian parliament.
Azhar's involvement in the 1999 hijacking freed Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British-born al-Qaeda member who formerly served in Pakistan's intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
The Jerusalem Post previously reported that the operation is targeting two main terror groups in Pakistan. Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, of which Azhar was a member.
Pakistan has rebutted India's claims and accused Mumbai of deliberately targeting civilians.
"India’s reckless action has brought the two nuclear-armed states closer to a major conflict," a release from Pakistan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry read.