Officials discount claims Wall Street Journal reporter is dead

By Kathy Gannon

Associated Press

KARACHI, Pakistan – A British-born Muslim militant admitted Thursday to kidnapping Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl and said he believed the journalist is dead. Officials dismissed the militant’s claim, and the Journal said it remained confident Pearl is alive.

“As far as I understand, he’s dead,” Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh said in a courthouse in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, where Pearl disappeared on Jan. 23 while investigating a story on Islamic militants. Saeed said he carried out the kidnapping of “my own free will,” adding: “I don’t want to defend this case. I did this.”

The 27-year-old Saeed has a history of kidnapping Westerners. He appeared in court Thursday sullen, bespectacled and surrounded by police with machine guns, helmets and bulletproof vests.

He was formally charged with kidnapping and ordered jailed for two more weeks.

Officials quickly cast doubt on Saeed’s statement about Pearl’s death. He gave no details on where or when the 38-year-old journalist was allegedly killed, and just a day earlier, police said, he had told them Pearl was still alive.

“Until the body is found we cannot believe what Omar is saying,” Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider told The Associated Press by telephone. “We need proof or evidence. We will continue to work on him, grind him, ask him ‘where was Pearl kept? Where is his body?’ Omar himself admitted he masterminded and planned this crime.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Aziz Khan also denied Saeed’s claims.

“This gentleman has been making several statements and changing these statements,” he told reporters Thursday. “We cannot give any credence to any of these statements that he gives.”

Meanwhile, Pearl’s wife, Mariane, who is six months pregnant with the couple’s first child, pleaded for her husband’s release in a letter to his captors.

“As you know, Danny is an innocent man, a journalist who has come to you as a guest with an open mind and the sole objective of writing about your views for a global audience,” she wrote.

“Danny and I learned just two days before his disappearance that we would be bringing a boy into the world,” she added. “Our child is a living soul. … Since his father’s disappearance, he is now breathing into his being the worry and apprehension I have about my husband’s well being.”

Steven Goldstein, spokesman for Dow Jones &Co., the Journal’s parent organization, said the company is still “hopeful.”

“We remain confident that Danny is still alive,” he said.

Police had said Saeed surrendered on Tuesday, but during his court appearance Saeed said he had been in police custody since Feb. 5. There was no explanation for the discrepancy.

Jamil Yousuf, head of a citizens-police liaison committee involved in the investigation, said that Saeed asked the kidnappers on Feb. 5 to release Pearl. Since then, Yousuf claimed, Saeed said he has not been in touch with Pearl’s captors.

Yousuf called Saeed’s statement in court Thursday “unexplainable.”

“He is such a shrewd person,” Yousuf said. “It’s difficult to understand him.”

At least eight to 10 more suspects were detained for questioning overnight, Yousuf added.

Pakistan has been a key supporter of the U.S. war against terrorism in Afghanistan, allowing U.S. forces to use Pakistani air bases. Saeed’s court appearance came a day after Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf met with President Bush at the White House.

“I was not arrested. I gave myself in on Feb. 5. I gave myself in after it became known that I was involved to save my family from harassment,” Saeed told the court in a soft voice, barely audible at times.

Saeed, who was brought to the courtroom in an armored personnel carrier under heavy security, quickly confessed to the kidnapping and criticized Pakistan’s alliance with America.

“Right or wrong I had my reasons,” he told the judge. “I think that our country shouldn’t be catering to America’s needs.”

Karachi police chief Kamal Shah said police believe that about half the people involved in Pearl’s kidnapping are in custody. He didn’t specify that number, but four suspects in the case are known to be detained.

“We hope that we will be able to trace the entire group, the entire network, in a couple of days,” Shah said. “Our top priority is to extract information to reach out to anyone who could lead us to Daniel Pearl’s whereabouts, the place where he is being kept.”

Asked about Saeed’s demeanor, Shah said: “He’s cool but intelligent. He is at times quite evasive. I could say a very intelligent type of person who can evade questions in interrogation for quite some time.”

Saeed was arrested in India in 1994 for kidnapping Western backpackers in Kashmir. The kidnappers demanded the release of Islamic militants fighting Indian rule in the contested Himalayan region. Saeed was shot and wounded by police and the hostages were freed unharmed.

He spent the next five years in jail, but was never tried. He was freed in December 1999 after gunmen hijacked an Indian Airlines jet to Kandahar, Afghanistan, and demanded the release of Saeed and two other militants.

Saeed’s surrender was considered the biggest break so far in the Pearl case.

Police disappeared on his way to meet with Islamic extremist contacts. He was believed to be investigating links between Pakistani militants and Richard C. Reid, accused of trying to detonate explosives hidden in his sneakers on a Paris-to-Miami flight in December.

Four days after Pearl disappeared, an e-mail sent to Pakistani and international media showed photos of him in captivity and demanded that the United States repatriate Pakistanis captured in Afghanistan and now detained at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A second e-mail sent Jan. 30 said Pearl would be killed in 24 hours. That was the last known message from his captors.

Three men accused of sending the e-mails – police constable Sheikh Mohammed Adeel, Fahad Naseem and Salman Saqib – were formally charged with kidnapping Tuesday and ordered held for two more weeks.