NEW YORK-Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was taken hostage by Islamic extremists in Pakistan, is now believed to be dead, the newspaper said Thursday. “We now believe, based on reports from the U.S. State Department and police officials of the Pakistani province of Sind, that Danny Pearl was killed by his captors. We are heartbroken at his death,” Peter Kann, publisher of the Journal, said in a statement.
“Danny was an outstanding colleague, a great reporter, and a dear friend of many at the Journal,” Kann said. “His murder is an act of barbarianism 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.”
Pearl was abducted in the port city of Karachi on Jan. 23 after arranging to interview the leader of a radical Muslim faction with purported ties to the al-Qaida terrorist network and terror suspect Richard C. Reid, arrested in December on a Paris-Miami flight he allegedly boarded with explosives in his shoes.
The statement, signed by Kann and Journal Managing Editor Paul Steiger, said, “We will, in coming months, find ways, public and private, to celebrate the great work and good works Danny did. But today is a day to grieve.
“This loss is, of course, most painful for Danny’s family, in this country and elsewhere. We ask our colleagues in the press to respect their privacy, and to permit them to grieve undisturbed.”
Pearl reported from the United States, Europe and Asia in a 12-year career with the financial daily. Based in Bombay, India, for the past year as the Journal’s bureau chief for South Asia, the 38-year-old Pearl was on assignment in Pakistan as part of its coverage of the war on terrorism in neighboring Afghanistan.
“The Wall Street Journal is a public institution, but the Pearls are private citizens,” the Journal statement said. “We hope also that our colleagues, too, will be permitted some time and space to begin the very difficult process of making peace with this profound loss.”
Pakistani officials said there were indications that Pearl had been lured into a trap by false information.
In an intensive sweep, Pakistani police seized several suspects, including Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, an Islamic militant who admitted in a court hearing that he had engineered Pearl’s abduction to protest Pakistan’s alliance with the United States’ post-Sept. 11 war on terrorism.
“Our country shouldn’t be catering to America’s needs,” Sheikh said.