KARACHI, 23 February — US reporter Daniel Pearl was murdered in cold blood in Karachi by his captors who slit his throat with a sharp knife, filmed their gruesome act, and dispatched the video to a news agency in Karachi.
“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,” the Karachi-based Online agency said in a written account to AFP.
“He is also seen saying that Muslims in Palestine and Kashmir and other parts of the world are being oppressed and brutalized.
“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.”
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 demands that “atrocities” against Muslims throughout the world cease, that Pakistani prisoners held at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba be released, and that the United States deliver to Pakistan F-16 fighter planes already paid for by Islamabad.
One of the Online news agency officials who viewed the video confirmed the agency’s description of its contents, saying it was “very very painful to watch.”
Online agency’s Executive Editor Sohail Iqbal told AFP by telephone from New York that the video “was dropped at our Karachi offices 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 US officials and on Thursday night handed over the cassette,” Iqbal said. He said the reporter to whom the cassette was addressed “has been detained by the police and he is being questioned.”
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has ordered an all-out nationwide manhunt for suspects involved in Pearl’s killing. Musharraf vowed to “liquidate” terrorists from his country. He offered condolences to the slain journalist’s wife on his own behalf and on behalf of his wife.
President George W. Bush, speaking during a visit to China, called the killing of the 38-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter a “criminal, barbaric” act. Pearl’s family said it was a “senseless murder” that had silenced “a gentle soul”.
His body has not been found and it is unclear exactly when he was executed. One US official in Washington called the death tape “very gruesome”.
The group claiming to hold Pearl, calling itself The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, accused him of being a spy — first for the CIA, then for Israeli intelligence. It said it was protesting against US treatment of Taleban and Al-Qaeda prisoners.
Lonnie Kelley, US Public Affairs officer at the US Consulate in Karachi, told Reuters “both Pakistan and US investigators have identified the perpetrators behind the crime”. Police are already holding some suspects.
They include key suspect Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British-born militant commonly known as Sheikh Omar who has previous links to kidnappings.
Pearl’s family 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 in Karachi, is more than six months pregnant with their first child, a son.
Friends said he was smart, sweet, soft-spoken, self-effacing and unlikely to take unreasonable risks. He also was a talented fiddler, guitarist and classical violinist. Pearl’s father was an academic and his mother a computer consultant.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan saluted the courage of Pearl and other journalists around the world. In New York, the Committee to Protect Journalists called Pearl’s death “brutal, wanton, and senseless”.
