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Daniel Pearl is seen in this photo released by his abductors on January 30. (Inset) His wife, Mariane. - AP
NEW YORK, FEB. 22. The Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped last month in Pakistan while trying to make contact with Islamic extremists, was slain by his captors, U.S. officials have said. A statement issued by authorities in Pakistan on Thursday said a videotape received by Pakistani and U.S. officials showed scenes of Pearl's murder. ``The videotape contained scenes showing Pearl in captivity and his murder by the kidnappers,'' it said. One U.S. official in Washington called the tape ``very gruesome.'' The 38-year-old reporter disappeared in Karachi on January 23 while investigating possible links between the alleged shoe bomber, Richard Reid, and the Saudi-born extremist, Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network. The group claiming to hold Pearl, the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, had accused him of being a spy - first for the CIA and then for Israeli intelligence - and said it was protesting U.S. treatment of Taliban and Al-Qaeda prisoners. Pak. orders arrests In Islamabad, the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, ordered an immediate roundup of suspects possibly linked to the case, according to a statement issued by his office. ``Gen. Musharraf has directed the Government of Sindh (the province where Pearl was kidnapped) and other national security agencies to apprehend each and every member of the gang of terrorists linked to this gruesome murder,'' it said. The videotape was first sent to a Pakistani reporter, who took around 24 hours to convince U.S. authorities that they should view the tape, a senior Pakistan Government official said today. The official, who asked not to be identified, said Pearl's last words were that he was a Jew as also his father. One of the chief investigators of Pearl's abduction said that the Pakistani journalist was working as an informer for officers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The three-minute video shows the hands of the kidnappers, their faces off-screen, beheading the reporter as he talks into the camera, the investigator said. ``The camera is focussed on Pearl's face. Suddenly his head is chopped off,'' he said, adding that a ``blunt weapon'' was used. The videotape showed at least two people taking part in the slaying but more could have been involved, he said, adding it was unclear from the tape when the slaying took place. ``We are heartbroken,'' the Wall Street Journal Publisher, Peter Kann, and the Managing Editor, Paul Steiger, said in a statement. ``His murder is an act of barbarism that makes a mockery of everything Danny's kidnappers claimed to believe in,'' they said. ``Their actions must surely bring shame to all true Pakistani patriots.'' `Gentle soul silenced' Pearl's family said that it was a ``senseless murder'' that had silenced ``a gentle soul''. They called him ``a beloved son, a brother, an uncle, a husband and a father to a child who will never know him.'' Pearl's wife Mariane, who was with him in Karachi, is more than six months pregnant with their first child. Pearl, Wall Street Journal's south Asia bureau chief based in Mumbai for the past two years, had been working in Karachi for three weeks when he was kidnapped. A Princeton, New Jersey, native, he grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles and graduated from Stanford University. He began his career at small newspapers in Massachusetts before becoming a business reporter at the Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in the Eighties. He joined the Wall Street Journal in 1990, working in Atlanta, Washington, London and Paris before moving to India. - Reuters, AFP
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