Born in Britain on December 23, 1973, Omar Sayeed Sheikh was educated in the Forest School in Snarebrook, England and later attended the London School of Economics. However before he could complete his first year in Statistics, Sheikh suddenly dropped out in 1993 and traveled to Bosnia as an aid worker for Islamic militants in Chechnya. From there, he traveled to Pakistan and joined the Harkat-ul-Ansar (Harkat-al-Mujahideen), a Pakistani militant group fighting in Kashmir.

After being trained by the outfit, Sheikh flew to New Delhi, India on his first mission. Sheikh kidnapped six Western tourists in Kashmir (2 American, 2 British, 1 German, 1 Norwegian) and under the name of the terrorist group Al Faran demanded the release of 22 terrorists jailed in India. Many of the 22 were the most wanted and dangerous terrorists in the world including Masood Azhar, the head of Harkat ul -Muhajideen. The Indian government refused to free these terrorists fearing that more violence would be caused by their release. His accomplices beheaded the Norwegian, one American escaped and the other four are presumed dead and Indian police arrested Sheikh in 1994.

After the Indian government acceded to demands of the hijackers of Indian Airliner IC-814 in 1999, Omar Sayeed Sheikh was released along with Azhar. The released terrorists and the hijackers, under the protection of the Taliban, fled to Pakistan and lived safely in Pakistan where he married and had one child without fear of arrest for several years.

Sometime in 2001, Sheikh is suspected by the CIA of transferring $100,000 to the September 11th hijackers. Sheikh is also responsible for the killing of American journalist Daniel Pearl. He is currently under trial in Pakistan.

The United States is seeking Sheikh's extradition, but Pakistan is likely to sentence him to death and hang him first to ensure that he does not reveal any links between terrorist organizations and the ISI (Pakistani Government Spy Agency).