- ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Four
days after a video showing kidnapped U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl's gruesome
death surfaced in Pakistan's volatile Karachi city, investigators seem
no closer to finding his decapitated body or knowing where or when he died.
-
- As a Karachi court on Monday extended the police detention
of the alleged mastermind of the kidnapping and two others by 14 days,
Pakistani police said they were looking for more suspects believed to be
involved in the crime.
-
- But police and other officials were wary of talking about
the progress of a nationwide manhunt for other suspects after seeing their
previous much-publicised hopes of rescuing the Wall Street Journal reporter
proved wrong by the kidnappers.
-
- Pearl, the Journal's Bombay-based South Asia bureau chief,
disappeared on January 23 in Karachi while working on a story about Islamic
radicals in Pakistan and links with Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden,
chief suspect for the September 11 hijack plane attacks on the United States.
-
- U.S. and Pakistani officials said a videotape delivered
to them in Karachi on Thursday -- on the eve of the Muslim festival of
Eid al-Adha -- showed Pearl being killed on camera.
-
- They said the tape, delivered by a Pakistani newspaper
worker -- who is also in police custody -- gave no indication where and
when the journalist was killed.
-
- The officials initially said the abductors killed Pearl
by slicing his throat with a knife after he admitted being Jewish.
-
- But U.S. media reports quoted an analysis of the videotape
by U.S. law enforcement officials as saying the reporter had been cut in
the chest and was probably already dead when suspected Islamic extremists
cut his throat in front of the camera.
-
- The three-and-a-half-minute videotape included different
scenes that had been spliced together, making it impossible to determine
exactly how or when Pearl was killed, the Washington Post quoted the analysis
as saying.
-
- But it said the tape made clear he was not conscious
when his throat was slit.
-
- A Pakistani source told Reuters Pakistani and U.S. officials
had at one stage discussed the possibility of releasing the tape to news
organisations but later decided the scenes were too gruesome to be shown.
-
- Pakistani police on Monday submitted the names of 11
suspects in a Karachi court they believed were involved in Pearl's kidnapping
and execution.
-
- The police have already arrested four of the suspects,
including British-born Islamic radical Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who appeared
in a Karachi anti-terrorism court on Monday and was ordered detained for
another 14 days to give investigators more time to find Pearl's body.
-
- Among the seven suspects still at large is Amjad Hussain
Farooqi, known to Pearl as Imtiaz Siddiqui, and who is believed to have
carried out the kidnapping.
-
- The Washington Post quoted some officials as having concluded
Pearl was killed soon after he was kidnapped, probably January 31, a day
after people claiming to be his abductors sent an email threatening to
kill him within 24 hours if their demands were not met.
-
- Police sources and analysts now believe the demands,
including the release of Pakistani prisoners held at the U.S. base at Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, were never serious and that Pearl's captors always intended
to kill him, it said.
-
- According to the FBI tape analysis the Post said was
provided to Journal executives, the videotape begins by showing Pearl reciting
parts of his biography, including that he was Jewish.
-
- Three sources said he identified his father as being
Jewish, although other reports have said he cited his mother.
-
- Pearl then speaks about the Pakistani prisoners at Guantanamo
Bay, delivering apparently scripted lines similar to those included in
an email sent by his suspected captors.
-
- According to the analysis, the tape then cuts to other
scenes, and it is unclear whether they occurred immediately afterward or
hours or days later.
-
- The first subsequent scene, according to this analysis,
shows Pearl with superimposed images of Afghanistan behind him. Then, after
another splice, the tape shows part of Pearl's body with a four-inch incision
in his chest.
-
- The wound was not fresh, and was not bleeding, suggesting
Pearl could have been cut even days before, the Post quoted the analysis
as saying.
-
- "After another editing cut, Pearl appears lying
down. The arms of two men wearing short-sleeved, striped shirts are seen
as one reaches over with a knife and slashes Pearl's throat," the
report said.
-
- "Pearl was not conscious at the time, and investigators
studying the tape said they believe he was probably already dead because
he did not react to the touch of the knife.
-
- "We were told that there was absolutely no movement
whatsoever at the point of contact with the knife," the Post quoted
Steven Goldstein, vice-president and spokesman for Dow Jones Co., the Journal's
parent company, who confirmed the account.
-
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