Sunday, Feb 24, 2002
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ISLAMABAD, FEB. 23. The videotape that recorded the gruesome murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl, was dropped at the office of one of the news agencies in Karachi. The news agency, Online, spokesman has been quoted as saying, ``for the first two minutes the cassette shows Pearl speaking. He appears calm and he is saying that his mother and father both were Jews and he had himself gone to Israel''. ``He is also seen saying that Muslims in Palestine and Kashmir and other parts of the world are being oppressed and brutalised. As he finishes the statement, a hand appears from behind and grabs his head, while another hand appears and with a sharp-edged weapon cuts his throat.'' According to the account later the camera zooms in to show Pearl's head separated from his body. A person whose identity was obscured then reads out in Urdu demanding that ``atrocities'' against Muslims throughout the world cease, that Pakistani prisoners held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, be released, and that the United States deliver to Pakistan F-16 fighter planes already paid for by Pakistan. The Executive Editor of the news agency, Online, has said that the video ``was dropped at our Karachi office on Wednesday addressed, by name, to one of our reporters. Our reporters watched the video, which had been recorded on a movie camera. We discussed it with the local U.S. officials and on Thursday night handed over the cassette.'' He has said the reporter to whom the cassette was addressed ``has been detained by the police and he is being questioned''. The Pakistan Interior Minister, Moinuddin Haider, had told a news conference here on Friday that the investigators into the case are on the lookout for four other suspects. They are also searching for the three persons who had come to deliver the tape. Now the question of engaging the attention of the investigators relates to the date when his captors could have killed Pearl. One view is that he might been murdered in the last week of January when Pakistan and the U.S. refused to negotiate on the demands of the abductors. The other view is that he could have been executed more than a week ago. Despite all the vigil and manhunt, the killers of Pearl wanted to make a point by delivering the videotape right in Karachi city. Authorities are not sure if they could recover the body of the slain reporter. As a matter of abundant caution the Pakistan Government is also believed to have stepped up security at all American diplomatic missions and businesses in Pakistan, an Interior Ministry official said. ``We cannot rule out attacks on U.S. interests in Pakistan after what was happened with Pearl. The way the kidnappers executed him show they have made-up their mind that they do not care about their own future,'' an official of the Government has said.
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