This WP report says Pearl was murdered on video....Journal Says That Kidnapped Reporter Is Dead
Pearl's Murder Was Videotaped, According to U.S. Officials
By Peter Baker and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 21, 2002; 5:59 PM
washingtonpost.com
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 22 (Friday) -- Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was abducted last month by Islamic extremists while reporting a story in Pakistan, has been killed by his captors, authorities and the newspaper said tonight.
U.S. officials and executives of the newspaper announced the development after a videotape was delivered to the U.S. consulate in Karachi tonight with gruesome footage showing Pearl being killed with a knife, according to a source close to the investigation. His body has not been found but authorities considered the videotape authentic.
"We now believe, based on reports from the U.S. State Department and police officials of the Pakistani province of Sind, that Danny Pearl was killed by his captors," Journal Publisher Peter Kann said. "We are heartbroken at his death. Danny was an outstanding colleague, a great reporter, and a dear friend of many at the Journal. His murder is an act of barbarism that makes a mockery of everything Danny's kidnappers claimed to believe in. They claimed to be Pakistani nationalists, but their actions must surely bring shame to all true Pakistani patriots."
The State Department decried Pearl's murder but credited the Pakistani government for making "every effort" to save the Journal correspondent. "The murder of Mr. Pearl is an outrage and we condemn it," the department said in a statement. "Both the United States and Pakistan are committed to identifying all the perpetrators of this crime and bringing them to justice."
Pearl, 38, the Journal's South Asia bureau chief, disappeared Jan. 23 after going to a restaurant in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi to meet with intermediaries he hoped would arrange an interview with an Islamic cleric. Pearl was investigating links between Pakistani extremists and Richard C. Reid, the British citizen accused of trying to blow up a commercial airliner over the Atlantic Ocean with explosives hidden in his sneakers.
His kidnappers sent a pair of e-mail messages to news organizations claiming to have taken Pearl because he was a CIA agent and including photographs of him with a handgun held to his head. The e-mail messages issued a series of demands, including the release of Pakistani prisoners being held by U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Journal and the CIA denied that Pearl worked for the government; the second e-mail message from the kidnappers said they now understood he did not work for the CIA but now linked him to Israeli intelligence, an allegation likewise denied by the Journal.
Police arrested a prominent radical Islamic militant, Sheikh Omar Saeed, who spent five years in an Indian prison for kidnapping four Westerners before being released in a trade with airplane hijackers in 1999. Saeed admitted involvement in the kidnapping, saying he wanted to show that Pakistan should not cater to American needs.
In open court, Saeed said last week that he believed Pearl to be dead, however Pakistani officials from the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, on down publicly cast doubt on his statement. Sources said last week that Saeed told interrogators privately that he believed Pearl was killed Jan. 31 during a failed escape attempt. He said he learned of the death on Feb. 5 when he called accomplices who had been holding him.
The videotape delivered to the U.S. consulate in Karachi left no doubt that Pearl was indeed killed, according to the source. The videotape showed Pearl speaking with someone, almost as if he were conducting an interview, when suddenly an unseen assailant grabbed him and slit his throat, the source said. The videotape included no date, no audio and no faces other than Pearl's, the source said.
Pearl's wife, Mariane, who is pregnant with their first child, had remained in Karachi issuing several public pleas with kidnappers to release her husband unharmed.
His death could prove to be a major international embarrassment to Musharraf and his government. The case has been the top issue in Pakistan for weeks and came to overshadow Musharraf’s own debut visit in Washington, where he personally assured President Bush that he believed Pearl was still alive and would soon be rescued.
Musharraf has given conflicting interpretations of the roots of the abduction case. In an interview before heading to Washington, he blamed the crime on agents working with arch-rival India, even though Saeed has been one of the leading fighters against Indian rule in the disputed province of Kashmir. Then while in Washington, Musharraf suggested the kidnapping was part of a backlash against his recent campaign against Islamic extremism in Pakistan.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company |
