Daniel Pearl Confirmed Dead

Daniel Pearl, the kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter, is dead. <br><br>The newspaper has just issued a statement that the FBI is now convinced that Pearl, who was kidnapped on Jan. 23 in Pakistan,

Thursday, February 21st 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

Daniel Pearl, the kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter, is dead.

The newspaper has just issued a statement that the FBI is now convinced that Pearl, who was kidnapped on Jan. 23 in Pakistan, is dead.

The State Department confirmed Pearl's death.

"Our embassy in Pakistan has confirmed today that they have received evidence that Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is dead. We have informed Mr. Pearl's family and expressed our sincere condolences."

The State Department also condemned the killing.

"The murder of Mr. Pearl is an outrage and we condemn it. Both the U.S. and Pakistan are committed to identifying all the perpetrators of this crime and bringing them to justice. We will continue to work closely with Pakistani authorities, who had made every effort to locate and free Mr. Pearl."

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher provided no details on the evidence. Two U.S. officials said, however, the FBI had obtained a videotape purportedly showing Pearl being killed, and is evaluating the tape's authenticity. The officials said spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Journal released a statement by Peter Kahn who is the publisher of the newspaper and the managing editor, Paul Steiger.
The statement reads in part "we now believe based on the reports from the U.S. State Department and police officials of the Pakistani province of Sind, that Danny Pearl was killed by his captors. We are heart broken 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 that Danny's kidnappers claim to believe in."

Pearl, the Wall Street Journal's South Asian bureau chief, was abducted on his way to a meeting in Karachi with Islamic extremists. He hoped they would provide information about e-mails exchanged by Pakistani militants and Richard C. Reid, the so-called shoe bomber arrested on a Paris-to-Miami flight in December with explosives in his sneakers.

Four days later, an e-mail sent to Pakistani and international media showed photos of Pearl in captivity â€” including one with a gun pointed to his head â€” and demanded that the United States repatriate Pakistanis captured in Afghanistan who are being held at a U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

A second e-mail sent Jan. 30 said the 38-year-old reporter would be killed in 24 hours. That was the last known message from his captors.

Investigators traced the e-mails to Fahad Naseem, who they said had the messages stored on his laptop computer.

In a closed door deposition, Fahad Naseem, 21, admitted sending e-mails announcing Pearl's kidnapping on orders of British-born suspect Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, according to defense attorney Khawaja Naveed Ahmed.

Naseem was among three people arrested for sending the e-mails announcing Pearl's Jan. 23 abduction, which included photos of him in captivity. Naseem was brought to court with his head covered by a hood and surrounded by three dozen heavily armed policemen.

Also arrested and accused of sending the e-mails were Sheikh Mohammed Adeel, a constable with the police department's special branch, and Saqib, the cousin. Both are thought to have links to an extremist group called Jaish-e-Mohammed.

Twelve days ago, Naseem and the other two suspected e-mailers were formally charged and remanded into custody for two weeks. A new remand hearing was pushed forward to Thursday because of the start of the Islamic Eid al-Adha holiday this weekend.

Saeed, the alleged mastermind, publicly admitted to the kidnapping in a court appearance last week, but that confession may not be enough to convict him because he confessed without being sworn in and without the presence of a court stenographer, the chief prosecutor said.

During his court appearance, Saeed, the son of a Pakistani-born clothing merchant who lives in Britain, also said that he believed the journalist was dead.

Saeed's statement caught authorities by surprise because the hearing was held only to formally open the court proceedings against him and remand him to police custody. Saeed unexpectedly made his confession without having been sworn to the truth and without a court stenographer being present.

Pearl reported from the United States, Europe and Asia in a 12-year career with the financial daily. Based in Bombay, India, for the past year as the Journal's bureau chief for South Asia, the 38-year-old Pearl was on assignment in Pakistan as part of its coverage of the war on terrorism in neighboring Afghanistan.

The Princeton, N.J., native had worked for newspapers in western Massachusetts and briefly in San Francisco before joining the Journal in Atlanta in 1990. He later reported from Washington, London and Paris - where he wrote about the Middle East - before moving to Asia.

Pakistani officials said there were indications that Pearl had been lured into a trap by false information.

In an intensive sweep, Pakistani police seized several suspects, including Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, an Islamic militant who admitted in a court hearing that he had engineered Pearl's abduction to protest Pakistan's alliance with the United States' post-Sept. 11 war on terrorism.

"Our country shouldn't be catering to America's needs," Sheikh said.

According to Pakistani authorities, Sheikh, a British-born key figure in an airplane hijacking and hostage incident in 1999, first told them Pearl was alive but later claimed the reporter had been killed in an escape attempt around Jan. 31.