28 Feb. - 6 March 2002
Issue No.575
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 28 Feb. - 6 March 2002 Issue No.575 |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Hard to fathom
Absar Alam from Karachi reports on the mysterious murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan
On 21 February, the US consulate in Karachi, Pakistan received a four- minute videotape of American journalist Daniel Pearl's brutal execution. The tape, filmed in several spliced segments, was delivered by Ahmed Jan, a Karachi-based marketing manager of a Peshawar daily, who was later arrested by police.
Daniel Pearl
In the first segment, Pearl acknowledges that he and his parents are Jewish and that his grandfather and other relatives had been living in Israel. In the second segment, a hand slashes his throat with a sharp tool. In the third and last segment, his headless body and the severed head are shown separately.
Investigators believe Pearl was dead before his head was severed, as no blood oozed when his captors slashed his throat and severed the neck.
Although the video camera focused on Pearl throughout the filming, the tape also showed buildings in Afghanistan bombed by the US. Investigators who have thoroughly examined the videotape believe that Pearl was killed a few days after his kidnapping.
The motive behind Pearl's death is yet unknown.
In their first e-mails sent to the police, the captors had accused Pearl of being a CIA and Mossad agent. US officials and the Wall Street Journal have denied these allegations. The newspaper said that Pearl, a Princeton, New Jersey, native, who worked at the Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, had no links with any state agency. After his stint at the Berkshire Eagle, he joined the Wall Street Journal in 1990.
Pearl, 38, went missing on 23 January in Karachi while working on a story to unearth possible connections between Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qa'eda network and shoe bomber Richard Reid, who faces charges in Massachusetts for allegedly trying to ignite an explosive hidden in his sneakers during a Paris-Miami flight.
A joint FBI-Pakistan police massive manhunt was launched across Pakistan to trace three unidentified Arabs and one Pakistani with suspected links to Al-Qa'eda believed to have masterminded the kidnapping and killing of Pearl. The men are believed to have forwarded the videotape to Jan.
With the appearance of the videotape showing Pearl being killed after his admittance of being Jewish, the case has apparently taken an anti-Semitic overtone. One of the investigators linked Pearl's killing to the fall out of the ongoing wave of violence in the Middle East.
US Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlin called on Pakistani President Gen Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday to ask for the extradition of the prime suspect, Sheikh Ahmed Omar Saeed, who was arrested early this month. He, along with three accomplices, were brought before Pakistan's Anti-Terrorism Court this week as police sought a two-week extension of their remand in custody for further investigation.
In the first two weeks of the investigation, however, the police were unable to extract any credible information from Sheikh Omar or the others. A high-ranking official in the investigation said that Pakistan and the United States were convinced that Pearl's kidnapping was part of a bigger conspiracy against US interests in the region and that militant groups were planning attacks against US targets, including the US consulate in Karachi.
Last week, Musharraf called US President George Bush to discuss Pearl's slaying and allay US fears that militant Islamists were preparing for attacks on American interests to protest Pakistan's pro-US policy in the war against terror.
The Pakistani government has beefed up security for diplomats, especially those from the US.
There have also been reports that Pearl's captors have threatened investigators to dissuade them from further investigation into the case.
Musharraf said Pearl's brutal killing has "tarnished the image of Pakistan and Islam."
According to Chamberlin, a large contingent of FBI agents is supporting the Pakistani police in what may be the largest criminal probe in the country's history. "It's a hideous affair, done by people who are cowards," she added.
An investigator speaking on condition of anonymity said Pearl's slaying was meant to harm Americans, but it also carried a streak of anti-Jewish sentiment spreading through Pakistan due to the ongoing Israeli military violence against Palestinians.
Mariane Pearl, the slain journalist's seven-month pregnant widow, said, "The terrorists who say they killed my husband may have taken his life, but they did not take his spirit. Danny is my life. They may have taken my life, but they did not take my spirit." She added that, "Revenge would be easy. But it is far more valuable in my opinion to address this problem of terrorism with enough honesty to question our own responsibility as nations and as individuals for the rise of terrorism."
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