U.S. officials confirmed Thursday that Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter kidnapped in Pakistan last month while investigating Islamic terrorist groups, has been killed.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad had “received evidence” Thursday confirming the death of the 38-year-old foreign correspondent. Pearl had been lured into a trap in the port city of Karachi on Jan. 23.
Another U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that an undated videotape delivered to American diplomats showed Pearl being slain by his captors. Other sources said he was killed with a knife.
“It shows an execution, basically,” said a foreign diplomatic official, also speaking on condition of anonymity.
President Bush, who had emphasized his concern about the Pearl case to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf during their meeting in Washington last week, said that “all Americans are sad and angry to learn of the murder.”
Speaking at a hotel in Beijing, where he was completing a six-day tour of East Asia, a grim-faced Bush said: “Laura and I and the American people are deeply saddened to learn about the loss of Daniel Pearl’s life. We are really sad for his wife and his parents and his friends and colleagues who have been clinging to hopes for weeks that he would be found alive.”
Mariane Pearl, who had accompanied her husband to Karachi and remained there hoping for his release, is seven months pregnant with their first child. Bush expressed special sympathy for the baby “who will now know his father through the memory of others.”
Boucher, condemning Pearl’s slaying as “an outrage,” said that “both the United States and Pakistan are committed to identifying all the perpetrators of this crime and bringing them to justice.”
Only a day earlier, the State Department had announced a new administration policy committing the U.S. government to work for the return of every American civilian kidnapped abroad and the prosecution of all captors.
Musharraf said in a statement Thursday that he has directed “national security agencies to apprehend each and every one of the gang of terrorists involved in this gruesome murder.”
Pakistani officials said later that Pearl’s body had not been recovered.
Parents, sisters get news
As word of Pearl’s slaying spread, his parents and two sisters issued poignant words from their home in California.
“Up until a few hours ago, we were confident that Danny would return safely, for we believe that no human being could be capable of harming such a gentle soul,” the family said. “Danny was a beloved son, a brother, an uncle, a husband and a father to a child who will never know him. He was a musician, a writer, a storyteller and a bridge-builder.”
Pearl, widely respected as a tenacious and curious reporter with a wry sense of humor, was the Wall Street Journal’s South Asia bureau chief, based in Bombay. He had traveled to Karachi to research a story about a Muslim group with reported ties to Al Qaeda terrorist group and Richard Reid, the alleged “shoe bomber” arrested in December on a flight from Paris to Miami.
Instead, Pakistani authorities have said, Pearl was lured on Jan. 23 into a trap laid by Sheik Omar Saeed, a British-born Islamic militant with a history of kidnapping foreigners. An e-mail message purportedly sent by the kidnappers soon after Pearl was abducted included photographs showing the journalist bound in chains and with a gun pointed at his head.
Pakistani officials thought they had achieved a break in the case with the arrests of three alleged accomplices on Feb. 3 and then the capture of Saeed on Feb. 12.
Saeed confessed during a court hearing that he had orchestrated Pearl’s abduction to protest Pakistan’s alliance with the U.S. after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“Our country shouldn’t be catering to America’s needs,” he said.
Saeed also said that the American reporter had been killed while trying to escape, but Pakistani authorities rejected that claim.
U.S. officials received the videotape depicting Pearl’s slaying Thursday, although it is unclear when the execution occurred. The FBI was studying the videotape for clues about the kidnappers, but bureau officials declined to comment.
`The tape appears correct’
“The recorded video contained scenes showing Mr. Pearl in captivity and scenes of his murder by the kidnappers. The tape appears to be correct,” the interior minister of Sindh province in Pakistan, Mukhtar Ahmad Sheik, told The Associated Press.
Pearl’s friends and colleagues at the Wall Street Journal, where he had worked for the last 12 years, were shocked by news of his death, especially because earlier in the day company officials had circulated an e-mail that was optimistic about the situation.
“There was an e-mail today saying they were hopeful. They wouldn’t have sent that out if they weren’t,” said a reporter who asked not to be named because of a company request that employees not speak to the news media.
“Danny was an outstanding colleague, a great reporter and a dear friend of many at the Journal,” Managing Editor Paul Steiger told reporters outside the newspaper’s Washington bureau.
“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.”
A former colleague remembered him as “an idiosyncratic guy, very funny.”
An accomplished reporter
Born in 1963 in Princeton, N.J., Pearl graduated from Stanford University and worked for newspapers in western Massachusetts and San Francisco before joining the Wall Street Journal in 1990. He was stationed in Atlanta, Washington, London and Paris before taking up his Bombay posting in December 2000.
A Journal story about Pearl last month recounted how he met his wife at a party in Paris while visiting friends. Asked later what he had done over the weekend, Pearl replied: “I went to Paris and fell in love.”
In Washington, Pearl indulged in a favorite hobby: playing the fiddle with local bluegrass bands. He often performed at a nightclub in a trendy Washington neighborhood, where earlier this month fellow musicians held a benefit for him and played his favorite tune, “Red Haired Boy.”
“Danny wasn’t just a musician, he was a member of our family for a long time,” a bartender at the nightclub, Madam’s Organ, said Thursday evening. “This is so difficult to talk about right now.”
