Author:
Publication: CNN
Date: February 1, 2002
The group's e-mails have contained
pictures of Pearl, some of which show a gun pointed at his head
Karachi, Pakistan (CNN) -- The
fate of kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was unclear
Friday as news organizations received word that he had been killed while
Pakistani police said they received a demand for money for his release.
An e-mail purportedly sent by Pearl's
kidnappers in Pakistan and sent to news organizations on Friday said he
had been killed, adding that they were "thirsty for the blood of another
American."
A group that claimed to hold Pearl
-- which calls itself The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani
Sovereignty -- had sent e-mails to the media on Thursday saying it would
delay for a day its threat, issued on Wednesday, to execute Pearl if its
demands to release Pakistani detainees, held by the United States in its
war on terrorism, were not met.
A Wall Street Journal spokesman
said, "We have seen the reports and we remain hopeful they are not true."
Meanwhile, police in Karachi, Pakistan,
said a group demanded $2 million in ransom within the next 36 hours in
exchange for Pearl's release. The group also demanded U.S. forces release
the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Salam Zaeef.
Police said the ransom demand was
made in a phone call to the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, but officials there
would not confirm they had received such a message. The call came in at
about the same time the e-mail claiming Pearl had been killed reached news
organizations.
Pakistani police said officers were
searching the nation's more than 300 graveyards for Pearl's body.
U.S. President Bush said Friday
"we have some leads," including e-mails sent by the group.
"We are very concerned about The
Wall Street Journal reporter," Bush said during a photo opportunity with
Jordan's King Abdullah II. "We've been in touch with the Pakistani government;
we've been in touch with the Wall Street Journal. We've got both our agencies
in the area actively involved in trying to rescue him."
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell
said he has been in touch with Pakistan's president about the case. He
told reporters Thursday that the United States is doing everything it can
to win Pearl's release, but is unwilling to meet the demands of the kidnappers.
Pearl's abductors have demanded
the release of all Pakistanis held by the United States as a result of
the war on terrorism, including those held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and
have ordered American journalists to get out of Pakistan in three days,
a deadline which expires Saturday. The group has accused Pearl of working
for the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency.
The Pearl abduction continued to
stir up diplomatic controversy. Pakistani authorities Friday made further
suggestions of Indian involvement in the kidnapping of Pearl, despite New
Delhi's insistence the charge is "ridiculous."
Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul
Sattar, speaking at a news conference in Berlin, Germany, said the cellular
phone records of those arrested in the case show calls to "prominent personalities
in India."
Syed Kamal Shah, the police inspector
general in Karachi, Pakistan, said one of the people Pearl was going to
meet the day he was abducted is from the Indian state of Punjab, on the
Pakistani border. Shah said the information came from a journalist working
with Pearl.
The suggestion of an Indian link
to the case was also made Thursday by a spokesman for Pakistan's president,
but an Indian government spokeswoman said soon afterward that the assertion
was "ridiculous."
"This is just one more example of
the Pakistani military establishment imagination running riot. What else
can one say? It has the stamp of ridiculous written all over it," the spokeswoman
said.
Pearl, 38, was in the region to
write about Richard Reid, the British man being held in the United States
on charges of trying to blow up an airliner with explosives hidden in his
shoes.
The reporter was abducted on January
23 while on his way to interview Sheikh Mubarik ali Gilani, the religious
head of the fundamentalist Islamic Jamaat ul-Fuqra group, about possible
ties the group had to Reid.
Gilani turned himself in to police
Wednesday, and police had called him their main suspect. But Friday, Pakistani
officials said that status may change because there has been no direct
link to Pearl.
At least three others have been
detained in the case, all of them traced through their cell phone records.
The managing editor for the Wall
Street Journal has sent several messages to Pearl's kidnappers urging them
to free Pearl, saying his safe release could allow them to communicate
their views to the world.
