Los Angeles Times
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Conflicting reports emerged Friday about the fate of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl, with an e-mail sent to news organizations claiming he had been killed and reports of a telephone call to the U.S. Consulate in Karachi demanding ransom for Pearl’s release.
An e-mail message believed to have been sent by Pearl’s kidnappers claimed Friday that he had been killed because their demands for the release of Pakistani terror suspects had not been met.
“We have killed Mr. Danny Now Mr bush can find his body in the grave yards of Karachi we have thrown him there,” the message read. “The Reason why we killed him is because US killed so many people in Afghanistan and other parts of the world.”
The e-mail added a warning to other U.S. citizens in Pakistan: “now we are thirsty for the blood of another American.”
A glimmer of hope emerged Friday evening when various reports surfaced of a demand for a $2 million ransom for Pearl’s freedom. But as the night wore on, those reports began to unravel. The U.S. Consulate and the U.S. Embassy denied separate reports that they had received such a call.
“The Pakistani authorities are taking it seriously, and they are in the process of searching graveyards to assess its validity,” U.S. Consulate spokesman Lonnie Kelley said of the death announcement.
CIA counterterrorism experts examined the new e-mail “to see if they can determine if it’s authentic,” one official said.
He noted that the message had fewer misspellings and other errors than previous e-mails. “So there are some inconsistencies,” said the official, who asked not to be identified. “It’s kind of confusing. It’s difficult to say if it’s a hoax or not.”
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