Videotaped execution in Pakistan is seen as warning by extremists

KARACHI, Pakistan The gruesome, videotaped murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl suggests that his killing was a well-planned execution by kidnappers who probably never intended to set him free, police sources and other analysts said Friday.
.
Despite issuing a series of political demands shortly after Pearl's abduction four weeks ago, it now seems clear that the kidnappers planned to kill Pearl from the very beginning, for reasons that remain murky, police officials said.
.
The possible motives range from sending a warning message to President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan not to crack down on Islamic extremists, to retaliating against the United States for its war in Afghanistan.
.
In addition, news accounts have been rife in recent weeks with suggestions that Pearl was targeted by people with ties to secret Pakistani government agencies because of a sensitive story he was working on.
.
"It seems that they wanted to kill Daniel from the moment they kidnapped him, " a senior police investigator said Friday. "We now believe that killing Daniel in the most gruesome fashion and releasing its video to the outside world was the top-most priority of his kidnappers," he said. "The barbaric murder and its filming was part of the plan from the very beginning."
.
Pearl, 38, was kidnapped Jan. 23 from the front of a Karachi restaurant, where he had gone to meet and interview the head of a radical Islamic organization. That man, who never met Pearl, was later interrogated and cleared by the police, who believe the promised interview was a ruse by others to lure Pearl into the kidnapping.
.
Late Thursday, a videotape was delivered to the U.S. Consulate in Karachi showing Pearl sitting in apparently casual conversation, and then abruptly having his throat slashed by several people whose faces were not visible. Pearl was identified as the victim during a viewing of the tape by U.S. officials and an editor of the paper.
.
It was unclear when the killing occurred. His body has not been found.
.
Several people are currently being held by Pakistani police in connection with Pearl's abduction, including a well-known Islamic militant, Sheikh Omar Saeed, who admitted in an open court appearance last week to involvement in the kidnapping. Saeed told investigators that he had learned of Pearl's death in a coded telephone conversation with associates on Feb. 5, adding that he believed Pearl was actually killed Jan. 31, one day after Pearl's abductors released an e-mail message threatening to kill the reporter if their demands were not met within 24 hours.
.
Some people involved in the case said they believe that Saeed's comments in court may themselves have been a coded message to his alleged accomplices to kill Pearl, the Bombay-based South Asia bureau chief for The Journal for the last two years.
.
The Pakistani interior minister, Moinuddin Haider, said the authorities were searching for four other suspects and vowed to break the case. "We know their names, we know their identities," he said at a briefing in Islamabad. "We are surely after them and once that is done the whole network will be broken."
.
"This can't be the work of a small group," a second police investigator said. "Even in the last act, there were at least eight to ten people present on the scene," including at least five in the room where Pearl was killed, he said. "We suspect that at least 15 people participated directly in the operation to kidnap and murder Danny Pearl," he said. "We have identified all the puppets in the game, but we still don't know who was holding their threads."
.
The police previously have said that the intricate planning of the operation signaled the involvement of a well-trained intelligence organization or equally professional terrorist group.
.
Haider said Pearl may have been held captive in an "underground cell" and said the videotape was delivered to authorities late Thursday night by a Pakistani journalist based in Karachi who worked for a New York newspaper. The journalist told the authorities he had received the videotape from three men and gave descriptions of each. Investigators were trying to determine whether the descriptions matched those of the four main suspects already being sought. Haider declined to identify the journalist or the newspaper.
.
The videotape was turned over to the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, where investigators who watched it shared a "unanimous opinion" that it showed Pearl being killed, Haider said.
.
While originally said not to include any audio, a U.S. source briefed on the contents of the tape said that, in fact, Pearl could be heard saying that he was Jewish and that his father was Jewish, presumably under direction of his kidnappers. Pearl was forced to read a statement denouncing U.S. actions in the region, the source said, before one of his assailants suddenly grabbed him and slit his neck.
.
Confirmation of Pearl's death ended weeks of speculation about his fate. Two e-mails sent to news organizations in late January by his abductors, with digital pictures of Pearl electronically attached, presented a series of political demands to the U.S. government that implied that the captors might be open to negotiating his release. But from the beginning, virtually everyone involved in the case considered the demands, which included the release of Pakistani prisoners held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, impossible to meet. And recently, after about three weeks without hearing from the kidnappers, there was speculation that they had killed Pearl because police were closing in, or that Pearl had been killed while trying to escape.
.
But the police said the cold-blooded execution suggested that the killing might have been meant as a message.
.
Haider said Pearl's killers evidently intended to take revenge against Musharraf for his campaign against Islamic extremists. "This act of terrorism is no help to Pakistan," he said. "It is to tarnish the image of Pakistan and all that it is doing to control the problem of terrorism in this region." Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Shahida Jamil visited Pearl's pregnant widow, Mariane, in Karachi on Friday to express the government's condolences, and Musharraf called President George W. Bush, who was wrapping up a six-day trip in Asia. "The two presidents agreed that the perpetrators of this barbaric act cannot be the friends of Islam nor of Pakistan," Haider said. About three weeks before his kidnapping, Pearl moved to Karachi for more in-depth reporting about Pakistan's role in the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism. Specifically, he was investigating links between Pakistani extremists and Richard Reid, the British man accused of trying to blow up an American plane with explosives hidden in his sneakers.
.
< < Back to Start of Article Videotaped execution in Pakistan is seen as warning by extremists

KARACHI, Pakistan The gruesome, videotaped murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl suggests that his killing was a well-planned execution by kidnappers who probably never intended to set him free, police sources and other analysts said Friday.
.
Despite issuing a series of political demands shortly after Pearl's abduction four weeks ago, it now seems clear that the kidnappers planned to kill Pearl from the very beginning, for reasons that remain murky, police officials said.
.
The possible motives range from sending a warning message to President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan not to crack down on Islamic extremists, to retaliating against the United States for its war in Afghanistan.
.
In addition, news accounts have been rife in recent weeks with suggestions that Pearl was targeted by people with ties to secret Pakistani government agencies because of a sensitive story he was working on.
.
"It seems that they wanted to kill Daniel from the moment they kidnapped him, " a senior police investigator said Friday. "We now believe that killing Daniel in the most gruesome fashion and releasing its video to the outside world was the top-most priority of his kidnappers," he said. "The barbaric murder and its filming was part of the plan from the very beginning."
.
Pearl, 38, was kidnapped Jan. 23 from the front of a Karachi restaurant, where he had gone to meet and interview the head of a radical Islamic organization. That man, who never met Pearl, was later interrogated and cleared by the police, who believe the promised interview was a ruse by others to lure Pearl into the kidnapping.
.
Late Thursday, a videotape was delivered to the U.S. Consulate in Karachi showing Pearl sitting in apparently casual conversation, and then abruptly having his throat slashed by several people whose faces were not visible. Pearl was identified as the victim during a viewing of the tape by U.S. officials and an editor of the paper.
.
It was unclear when the killing occurred. His body has not been found.
.
Several people are currently being held by Pakistani police in connection with Pearl's abduction, including a well-known Islamic militant, Sheikh Omar Saeed, who admitted in an open court appearance last week to involvement in the kidnapping. Saeed told investigators that he had learned of Pearl's death in a coded telephone conversation with associates on Feb. 5, adding that he believed Pearl was actually killed Jan. 31, one day after Pearl's abductors released an e-mail message threatening to kill the reporter if their demands were not met within 24 hours.
.
Some people involved in the case said they believe that Saeed's comments in court may themselves have been a coded message to his alleged accomplices to kill Pearl, the Bombay-based South Asia bureau chief for The Journal for the last two years.
.
The Pakistani interior minister, Moinuddin Haider, said the authorities were searching for four other suspects and vowed to break the case. "We know their names, we know their identities," he said at a briefing in Islamabad. "We are surely after them and once that is done the whole network will be broken."
.
"This can't be the work of a small group," a second police investigator said. "Even in the last act, there were at least eight to ten people present on the scene," including at least five in the room where Pearl was killed, he said. "We suspect that at least 15 people participated directly in the operation to kidnap and murder Danny Pearl," he said. "We have identified all the puppets in the game, but we still don't know who was holding their threads."
.
The police previously have said that the intricate planning of the operation signaled the involvement of a well-trained intelligence organization or equally professional terrorist group.
.
Haider said Pearl may have been held captive in an "underground cell" and said the videotape was delivered to authorities late Thursday night by a Pakistani journalist based in Karachi who worked for a New York newspaper. The journalist told the authorities he had received the videotape from three men and gave descriptions of each. Investigators were trying to determine whether the descriptions matched those of the four main suspects already being sought. Haider declined to identify the journalist or the newspaper.
.
The videotape was turned over to the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, where investigators who watched it shared a "unanimous opinion" that it showed Pearl being killed, Haider said.
.
While originally said not to include any audio, a U.S. source briefed on the contents of the tape said that, in fact, Pearl could be heard saying that he was Jewish and that his father was Jewish, presumably under direction of his kidnappers. Pearl was forced to read a statement denouncing U.S. actions in the region, the source said, before one of his assailants suddenly grabbed him and slit his neck.
.
Confirmation of Pearl's death ended weeks of speculation about his fate. Two e-mails sent to news organizations in late January by his abductors, with digital pictures of Pearl electronically attached, presented a series of political demands to the U.S. government that implied that the captors might be open to negotiating his release. But from the beginning, virtually everyone involved in the case considered the demands, which included the release of Pakistani prisoners held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, impossible to meet. And recently, after about three weeks without hearing from the kidnappers, there was speculation that they had killed Pearl because police were closing in, or that Pearl had been killed while trying to escape.
.
But the police said the cold-blooded execution suggested that the killing might have been meant as a message.
.
Haider said Pearl's killers evidently intended to take revenge against Musharraf for his campaign against Islamic extremists. "This act of terrorism is no help to Pakistan," he said. "It is to tarnish the image of Pakistan and all that it is doing to control the problem of terrorism in this region." Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Shahida Jamil visited Pearl's pregnant widow, Mariane, in Karachi on Friday to express the government's condolences, and Musharraf called President George W. Bush, who was wrapping up a six-day trip in Asia. "The two presidents agreed that the perpetrators of this barbaric act cannot be the friends of Islam nor of Pakistan," Haider said. About three weeks before his kidnapping, Pearl moved to Karachi for more in-depth reporting about Pakistan's role in the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism. Specifically, he was investigating links between Pakistani extremists and Richard Reid, the British man accused of trying to blow up an American plane with explosives hidden in his sneakers.
.Videotaped execution in Pakistan is seen as warning by extremists

KARACHI, Pakistan The gruesome, videotaped murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl suggests that his killing was a well-planned execution by kidnappers who probably never intended to set him free, police sources and other analysts said Friday.
.
Despite issuing a series of political demands shortly after Pearl's abduction four weeks ago, it now seems clear that the kidnappers planned to kill Pearl from the very beginning, for reasons that remain murky, police officials said.
.
The possible motives range from sending a warning message to President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan not to crack down on Islamic extremists, to retaliating against the United States for its war in Afghanistan.
.
In addition, news accounts have been rife in recent weeks with suggestions that Pearl was targeted by people with ties to secret Pakistani government agencies because of a sensitive story he was working on.
.
"It seems that they wanted to kill Daniel from the moment they kidnapped him, " a senior police investigator said Friday. "We now believe that killing Daniel in the most gruesome fashion and releasing its video to the outside world was the top-most priority of his kidnappers," he said. "The barbaric murder and its filming was part of the plan from the very beginning."
.
Pearl, 38, was kidnapped Jan. 23 from the front of a Karachi restaurant, where he had gone to meet and interview the head of a radical Islamic organization. That man, who never met Pearl, was later interrogated and cleared by the police, who believe the promised interview was a ruse by others to lure Pearl into the kidnapping.
.
Late Thursday, a videotape was delivered to the U.S. Consulate in Karachi showing Pearl sitting in apparently casual conversation, and then abruptly having his throat slashed by several people whose faces were not visible. Pearl was identified as the victim during a viewing of the tape by U.S. officials and an editor of the paper.
.
It was unclear when the killing occurred. His body has not been found.
.
Several people are currently being held by Pakistani police in connection with Pearl's abduction, including a well-known Islamic militant, Sheikh Omar Saeed, who admitted in an open court appearance last week to involvement in the kidnapping. Saeed told investigators that he had learned of Pearl's death in a coded telephone conversation with associates on Feb. 5, adding that he believed Pearl was actually killed Jan. 31, one day after Pearl's abductors released an e-mail message threatening to kill the reporter if their demands were not met within 24 hours.
.
Some people involved in the case said they believe that Saeed's comments in court may themselves have been a coded message to his alleged accomplices to kill Pearl, the Bombay-based South Asia bureau chief for The Journal for the last two years.
.
The Pakistani interior minister, Moinuddin Haider, said the authorities were searching for four other suspects and vowed to break the case. "We know their names, we know their identities," he said at a briefing in Islamabad. "We are surely after them and once that is done the whole network will be broken."
.
"This can't be the work of a small group," a second police investigator said. "Even in the last act, there were at least eight to ten people present on the scene," including at least five in the room where Pearl was killed, he said. "We suspect that at least 15 people participated directly in the operation to kidnap and murder Danny Pearl," he said. "We have identified all the puppets in the game, but we still don't know who was holding their threads."
.
The police previously have said that the intricate planning of the operation signaled the involvement of a well-trained intelligence organization or equally professional terrorist group.
.
Haider said Pearl may have been held captive in an "underground cell" and said the videotape was delivered to authorities late Thursday night by a Pakistani journalist based in Karachi who worked for a New York newspaper. The journalist told the authorities he had received the videotape from three men and gave descriptions of each. Investigators were trying to determine whether the descriptions matched those of the four main suspects already being sought. Haider declined to identify the journalist or the newspaper.
.
The videotape was turned over to the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, where investigators who watched it shared a "unanimous opinion" that it showed Pearl being killed, Haider said.
.
While originally said not to include any audio, a U.S. source briefed on the contents of the tape said that, in fact, Pearl could be heard saying that he was Jewish and that his father was Jewish, presumably under direction of his kidnappers. Pearl was forced to read a statement denouncing U.S. actions in the region, the source said, before one of his assailants suddenly grabbed him and slit his neck.
.
Confirmation of Pearl's death ended weeks of speculation about his fate. Two e-mails sent to news organizations in late January by his abductors, with digital pictures of Pearl electronically attached, presented a series of political demands to the U.S. government that implied that the captors might be open to negotiating his release. But from the beginning, virtually everyone involved in the case considered the demands, which included the release of Pakistani prisoners held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, impossible to meet. And recently, after about three weeks without hearing from the kidnappers, there was speculation that they had killed Pearl because police were closing in, or that Pearl had been killed while trying to escape.
.
But the police said the cold-blooded execution suggested that the killing might have been meant as a message.
.
Haider said Pearl's killers evidently intended to take revenge against Musharraf for his campaign against Islamic extremists. "This act of terrorism is no help to Pakistan," he said. "It is to tarnish the image of Pakistan and all that it is doing to control the problem of terrorism in this region." Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Shahida Jamil visited Pearl's pregnant widow, Mariane, in Karachi on Friday to express the government's condolences, and Musharraf called President George W. Bush, who was wrapping up a six-day trip in Asia. "The two presidents agreed that the perpetrators of this barbaric act cannot be the friends of Islam nor of Pakistan," Haider said. About three weeks before his kidnapping, Pearl moved to Karachi for more in-depth reporting about Pakistan's role in the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism. Specifically, he was investigating links between Pakistani extremists and Richard Reid, the British man accused of trying to blow up an American plane with explosives hidden in his sneakers.
.Videotaped execution in Pakistan is seen as warning by extremists

KARACHI, Pakistan The gruesome, videotaped murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl suggests that his killing was a well-planned execution by kidnappers who probably never intended to set him free, police sources and other analysts said Friday.
.
Despite issuing a series of political demands shortly after Pearl's abduction four weeks ago, it now seems clear that the kidnappers planned to kill Pearl from the very beginning, for reasons that remain murky, police officials said.
.
The possible motives range from sending a warning message to President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan not to crack down on Islamic extremists, to retaliating against the United States for its war in Afghanistan.
.
In addition, news accounts have been rife in recent weeks with suggestions that Pearl was targeted by people with ties to secret Pakistani government agencies because of a sensitive story he was working on.
.
"It seems that they wanted to kill Daniel from the moment they kidnapped him, " a senior police investigator said Friday. "We now believe that killing Daniel in the most gruesome fashion and releasing its video to the outside world was the top-most priority of his kidnappers," he said. "The barbaric murder and its filming was part of the plan from the very beginning."
.
Pearl, 38, was kidnapped Jan. 23 from the front of a Karachi restaurant, where he had gone to meet and interview the head of a radical Islamic organization. That man, who never met Pearl, was later interrogated and cleared by the police, who believe the promised interview was a ruse by others to lure Pearl into the kidnapping.
.
Late Thursday, a videotape was delivered to the U.S. Consulate in Karachi showing Pearl sitting in apparently casual conversation, and then abruptly having his throat slashed by several people whose faces were not visible. Pearl was identified as the victim during a viewing of the tape by U.S. officials and an editor of the paper.
.
It was unclear when the killing occurred. His body has not been found.
.
Several people are currently being held by Pakistani police in connection with Pearl's abduction, including a well-known Islamic militant, Sheikh Omar Saeed, who admitted in an open court appearance last week to involvement in the kidnapping. Saeed told investigators that he had learned of Pearl's death in a coded telephone conversation with associates on Feb. 5, adding that he believed Pearl was actually killed Jan. 31, one day after Pearl's abductors released an e-mail message threatening to kill the reporter if their demands were not met within 24 hours.
.
Some people involved in the case said they believe that Saeed's comments in court may themselves have been a coded message to his alleged accomplices to kill Pearl, the Bombay-based South Asia bureau chief for The Journal for the last two years.
.
The Pakistani interior minister, Moinuddin Haider, said the authorities were searching for four other suspects and vowed to break the case. "We know their names, we know their identities," he said at a briefing in Islamabad. "We are surely after them and once that is done the whole network will be broken."
.
"This can't be the work of a small group," a second police investigator said. "Even in the last act, there were at least eight to ten people present on the scene," including at least five in the room where Pearl was killed, he said. "We suspect that at least 15 people participated directly in the operation to kidnap and murder Danny Pearl," he said. "We have identified all the puppets in the game, but we still don't know who was holding their threads."
.
The police previously have said that the intricate planning of the operation signaled the involvement of a well-trained intelligence organization or equally professional terrorist group.
.
Haider said Pearl may have been held captive in an "underground cell" and said the videotape was delivered to authorities late Thursday night by a Pakistani journalist based in Karachi who worked for a New York newspaper. The journalist told the authorities he had received the videotape from three men and gave descriptions of each. Investigators were trying to determine whether the descriptions matched those of the four main suspects already being sought. Haider declined to identify the journalist or the newspaper.
.
The videotape was turned over to the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, where investigators who watched it shared a "unanimous opinion" that it showed Pearl being killed, Haider said.
.
While originally said not to include any audio, a U.S. source briefed on the contents of the tape said that, in fact, Pearl could be heard saying that he was Jewish and that his father was Jewish, presumably under direction of his kidnappers. Pearl was forced to read a statement denouncing U.S. actions in the region, the source said, before one of his assailants suddenly grabbed him and slit his neck.
.
Confirmation of Pearl's death ended weeks of speculation about his fate. Two e-mails sent to news organizations in late January by his abductors, with digital pictures of Pearl electronically attached, presented a series of political demands to the U.S. government that implied that the captors might be open to negotiating his release. But from the beginning, virtually everyone involved in the case considered the demands, which included the release of Pakistani prisoners held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, impossible to meet. And recently, after about three weeks without hearing from the kidnappers, there was speculation that they had killed Pearl because police were closing in, or that Pearl had been killed while trying to escape.
.
But the police said the cold-blooded execution suggested that the killing might have been meant as a message.
.
Haider said Pearl's killers evidently intended to take revenge against Musharraf for his campaign against Islamic extremists. "This act of terrorism is no help to Pakistan," he said. "It is to tarnish the image of Pakistan and all that it is doing to control the problem of terrorism in this region." Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Shahida Jamil visited Pearl's pregnant widow, Mariane, in Karachi on Friday to express the government's condolences, and Musharraf called President George W. Bush, who was wrapping up a six-day trip in Asia. "The two presidents agreed that the perpetrators of this barbaric act cannot be the friends of Islam nor of Pakistan," Haider said. About three weeks before his kidnapping, Pearl moved to Karachi for more in-depth reporting about Pakistan's role in the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism. Specifically, he was investigating links between Pakistani extremists and Richard Reid, the British man accused of trying to blow up an American plane with explosives hidden in his sneakers.