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: We still demand the following:
: We still demand the following:


: * The immediate release of [[United States|U.S.]] held prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
* The immediate release of [[United States|U.S.]] held prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.


: * The return of Pakistani prisoners to Pakistan.
* The return of Pakistani prisoners to Pakistan.


: * The immediate end of U.S. presence in Pakistan.
* The immediate end of U.S. presence in Pakistan.


: * The delivery of [[F-16]] planes that Pakistan had paid for and never received.
* The delivery of [[F-16]] planes that Pakistan had paid for and never received.


: We assure Americans that they shall never be safe on the [[Muslim]] Land of Pakistan.
: We assure Americans that they shall never be safe on the [[Muslim]] Land of Pakistan.

Revision as of 15:00, 11 November 2007

For other people named Daniel Pearl, see Daniel Pearl (disambiguation).
Daniel Pearl
Daniel Pearl
Born(1963-10-10)October 10, 1963
United States Princeton, New Jersey
DiedFebruary 1, 2002(2002-02-01) (aged 38)
Pakistan Karachi, Pakistan
OccupationJournalist
SpouseMariane Pearl

Daniel Pearl (October 10, 1963 – February 1, 2002) was an American journalist who was kidnapped and murdered in Karachi, Pakistan. At the time of his kidnapping, Pearl served as the South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal, stationed in Mumbai, India, and had been investigating the case of Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, and alleged links between Al Qaeda and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

In July 2002, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British national of Pakistani origin was sentenced to death for the abduction and death of Daniel Pearl.

In March 2007, at a closed military hearing in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said that he had personally beheaded Pearl.[1] Then he added, "for those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head."[2][3]

Early life

Daniel Pearl was born in Boondocks, Tennessee, and grew up in Encino in Los Angeles, California, where he attended Portola Middle School and Birmingham High School. His father, Judea Pearl, is a professor at UCLA. His mother, of Iraqi Jewish descent, is named Ruth. The history of the family and its connections to Israel are described by Judea Pearl in a book by Alan Dershowitz, What Israel means to me.[4] Danny, as he was known throughout his life, attended Stanford University from 1981 to 1985, where he stood out as a communications major with Phi Beta Kappa honors, a member of the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity, and co-founded a student newspaper called the Stanford Commentator. Pearl graduated Stanford with a B.A. in Communications, after which he spent a summer as a Pulliam Fellow intern at the Indianapolis Star and a winter bussing tables as a ski bum in Idaho. Following a trip to the then-Soviet Union, China, and Europe, he joined the North Adams Transcript and the Berkshire Eagle in western Massachusetts, then moved on to the San Francisco Business Times.

In 1990, Pearl started in the Wall Street Journal's Atlanta bureau and moved to the Washington, D.C. bureau in 1993 to cover telecommunications. He jumped to the Journal's London bureau in 1996, penning articles such as the October 1994 story of a Stradivarius violin allegedly found on a highway on-ramp[5], and a June 2000 story about Iranian pop music. His most notable investigations covered the ethnic wars in the Balkan where he discovered that charges of a genocide committed in Kosovo were unsubstantiated, and the American missile attack on military facility in Khartum, which he proved to be a pharmaceutical factory.

Later, he met and married Mariane. Their son, Adam Daniel Pearl, was born in Paris on May 28, 2002, three months after Daniel's death.

Death

On January 23, 2002, on his way to what he thought was an interview with Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani at the Village restaurant in Karachi, Pearl was kidnapped by a militant group calling itself The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty. This group claimed Pearl was a CIA agent and — using the e-mail address kidnapperguy@hotmail.com[6] — sent the United States a range of demands, including the freeing of all Pakistani terror detainees, and the release of a halted U.S. shipment of F-16 fighter jets to the Pakistani government.

The message read:

We give you one more day if America will not meet our demands we will kill Daniel. Then this cycle will continue and no American journalist could enter Pakistan.

Photos of Pearl handcuffed with a gun at his head and holding up a newspaper were attached. There was no response to pleas from Pearl's editor, and from his wife Mariane.

Nine days later, Pearl was murdered and beheaded. Pearl's body was found cut into ten pieces and buried in a shallow grave in the outskirts of Karachi on May 16. When the police found his remains, Abdul Sattar Edhi arrived promptly on the scene, personally collected all ten body parts, and took them to the morgue; then his body was returned to the United States and he was interred in the Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.

No autopsy was needed nor performed. The subsequent video (see next section) made the sequence of events clear. Years later, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed confessed to cutting off Pearl's head, but didn't state whether he had cut his throat: it is likely that one person did both.

The Daniel Pearl video

Daniel Pearl stating his identity in the video produced by his murderers.

On February 21, 2002, a videotape titled The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl, was released. The video shows Pearl's mutilated body and lasts three minutes and thirty-six seconds.

On the image to the right, the text in Arabic reads: My name is (Daniel Pearl), I am a Jewish-American... The English transcript of the text reads [sic]:

  • "My name is Daniel Pearl. I am a Jewish American from Encino, California USA.
  • I come from, uh, on my father's side the family is Zionist."
  • "My father's Jewish, my mother's Jewish, I'm Jewish!"
  • "My family follows Judaism. We've made numerous family visits to Israel.
  • "Back in the town of B'nei Braq there is a street named after my great grandfather Chayim Pearl who is one of the founders of the town."

According to Pearl's father, the fact revealed in the last sentence was not known outside the immediate family and, therefore, could not have been extracted from him by force. Pearl's father believes that his son chose to reveal it as a coded message to his family, that he was doing well and speaking freely in his own words.[7]

The second part of the video shows Pearl stating his captors' demands. A caption in Arabic is shown along the way. Pictures of dead Muslims and similar scenes are superimposed around the image of Pearl. Other images shown are those of United States President George W. Bush shaking hands with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and those of Palestinian boy Muhammad al-Dura, filmed by a France 2 TV crew who was allegedly killed by Israeli bullets whilst out walking with his father.

Published reports say that a technical error prevents the first slashing of Pearl's throat from being captured on film. In the video, Pearl's body is shown naked from the waist up with his throat slit at about 1 minute and 55 seconds into the video, by which time he would have bled to death. A man then cuts his head off. A few more images, such as captives held at Guantánamo Bay detention camp, are shown near the image of Pearl's head. The last 90 seconds of the video show the list of demands scrolling, superimposed on an image of Pearl's severed head being held by the hair.

The English transcript of the text reads [sic]:

NATIONAL MOVEMENT FOR THE RESTORATION OF PAKISTAN SOVEREIGNTY (NMRPS)
We still demand the following:
  • The immediate release of U.S. held prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
  • The return of Pakistani prisoners to Pakistan.
  • The immediate end of U.S. presence in Pakistan.
  • The delivery of F-16 planes that Pakistan had paid for and never received.
We assure Americans that they shall never be safe on the Muslim Land of Pakistan.
And if our demands are not met this scene shall be repeated again and again...

The video made its way to the Pakistani and United States governments. A jihadist site leaked the video onto the Internet. In April 2002, Dan Rather reported on CBS TV that the video was used extensively as a recruiting tool by jihadis in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Arrests

Three suspects were caught after the e-mail addresses that sent the ransom e-mail were traced by the Karachi Police.The arrests were carried out after investigation by Pakistani detective Mir Zubair Mahmood assisted by Pakistan CIA computer experts. The mastermind of the kidnapping, Ahmed Saeed Omar Shiek, surrendered to a former ISI officer, Brig Aijaz Shah, who concealed Shiek's whereabout from Karachi Police for a whole week.

On March 21, 2002, in Pakistan, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and three other suspects were charged with murder for their part in the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl. They were convicted on July 15, 2002 and Sheikh was sentenced to death. During the trial, Sheikh, the mastermind of the kidnapping, told investigators he had kidnapped Pearl to "strike a blow at the United States and embarrass the Pakistani government". Another of the suspects said Pearl had been targeted "because he was a Jew working against Islam". Shiek has appealed the sentence, but hearings in his case were postponed repeatedly, for over 30 times, and no definitive date has been set.

On March 10, 2007, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an alleged Al Qaeda operative reported to be third in command under Osama Bin Laden, claimed responsibility, before his Combatant Status Review Tribunal, for the murder of Daniel Pearl.[8] In a confession read during his Tribunal hearing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is on record repeating:

I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl, in the City of Karachi, Pakistan.

This confession repeated, word for word, the phrasing leaked, in 2002, from his controversial interrogation in a clandestine CIA interrogation center.[9]

On March 19, 2007 Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh's lawyers cited Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession in defense of their client.[10][11] They said they had always acknowledged that their client played a role in Pearl's murder, but they had always argued that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the actual murderer. They plan for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession to play a central role in their appeal of their client's death sentence.

In his book In the Line of Fire, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf states that Daniel Pearl's murderer was an agent of MI6 (British Intelligence), who at some point became a double agent.[12]

Aftermath

A collection of Pearl's writings (At Home in the World) was published posthumously in 2002 demonstrating his "extraordinary skill as a writer" and his "eye for quirky stories -- many of which appeared in The Journal's iconic "middle column".[13] Six of these stories were adapted by composer Russell Steinberg into an album: Stories from My Favorite Planet -- a trio for violin, piano and reader.

The Daniel Pearl Foundation was formed by Pearl's family and friends to continue Pearl's mission and to address what they consider the root causes of his death, in the spirit, style, and principles that shaped Pearl's work and character.[14] The principles cited include uncompromised objectivity and integrity; insightful and unconventional perspective; tolerance and respect for people of all cultures; unshaken belief in the effectiveness of education and communication; and the love of music, humor, and friendship. Daniel Pearl World Music Days have been held worldwide since 2002, and have promoted over 1500 concerts in over 60 countries, with dedications to tolerance and humanity.

Pearl's widow, Mariane Pearl, wrote the memoir A Mighty Heart which tells the full story of Pearl and more about his life.[15] This has been adapted into a film starring Angelina Jolie and Dan Futterman[16], who, like Daniel Pearl, is a member of Alpha Delta Phi[citation needed].

On September 1, 2003, a book titled Who Killed Daniel Pearl?, written by Bernard-Henri Lévy was published.[17] The book, which the author characterized as an "investigative novel", stirred controversy for some of its speculative conclusions about the killing, and for some of its characterizations of Pakistan, and for the author's decision to engage in an exercise of fictionalizing Pearl's thoughts at the end of his life. Lévy was criticized for the book.[18][19][20][21] This book is being adapted into a film directed by Tod Williams and starring Josh Lucas focusing on the last few days of Daniel Pearl's life.[22]

HBO Films produced a 79-minute documentary titled The Journalist and the Jihadi: The Murder of Daniel Pearl. It premiered on HBO on October 10, 2006. The documentary chronicles Pearl's life and death, and features extensive interviews with his immediate family. It is narrated by Christiane Amanpour, and has been short-listed for two Emmy awards.

American modernist composer Steve Reich wrote his 2006 work The Daniel Variations which interweaves Pearl's own words with verses from the Book of Daniel.

Pearl's parents, Judea and Ruth, edited and published a collection of responses sent to them from around the globe, entitled I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2004). Their son's final words on the video were "My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish," after which Pearl added one obscure detail, that a street in Israel's Bene Barak is named after his great grandfather who was one of the founders of the town[7]. The family has written that they understand this last detail authenticates his own voice and demonstrates his willingness to claim his identity, even in the hands of deadly captors. Judea Pearl has written that at first, this statement surprised him but he later understood it to be a reference to the town-building tradition of his family contrasted with the destructive aims of his captors. The seed idea to collect responses began when a girl from New York began to compile statements about being Jewish as her Bat Mitzvah project[citation needed] to create a future gift book for Daniel's son Adam. Judea Pearl then enlarged the idea by inviting responses from artists, government leaders, authors, journalists, scientists, scholars, rabbis and others. All wrote personal responses to what they thought upon hearing that these were Danny's last words. Some responses are one sentence, others several pages.

The book is organized by five themes: Identity; Heritage; Covenant, Chosenness, and Faith; Humanity and Ethnicity; Tikkun Olam (Repairing the World) and Justice. Contributors include Theodore Bikel, Alan Dershowitz, Kirk Douglas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Larry King, Amos Oz, Shimon Peres, Daniel Schorr, Elie Wiesel, Peter Yarrow, and A.B. Yehoshua.

Lawsuit

Mariane Pearl filed a lawsuit against Pakistan's Habib Bank and al-Qaeda, for the 2002 kidnapping, torture and murder of her husband[23], although the lawsuit was later withdrawn.[24]

Legacy

In 2002, Pearl posthumously received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award from Colby College and in 2007, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Moral Courage Award from the Houston Holocaust Museum.

On April 16, 2007, Pearl was added to the Holocaust Memorial on Miami Beach as the first non-Holocaust victim. His father, Judea Pearl, gave his consent for the induction in order to remind generations to come that "The forces of barbarity and evil are still active in our world. The Holocaust didn't finish in 1945."[25]Journalist Bradley Burston in Haaretz said that the addition of a post-Holocaust victim to the memorial diminishes the uniqueness of the Holocaust.[26]

In May 2007, the Communications Technology Magnet School at Birmingham High School was renamed the Daniel Pearl Journalism and Communications Magnet.

Shortly after Daniel's death, his parents, Ruth and Judea Pearl, founded the Daniel Pearl Foundation to further the ideals that inspired Daniel's life and work. The foundation's mission is to promote cross-cultural understanding through journalism, music, and dialogue. Its programs include: World Music Days which uses the power of music to promote tolerance and inspire respect for differences; PEARL World Youth News which provides an online journalist certification course for High School Students; Annual Daniel Pearl Journalism and Editorial Fellowships which brings mid-career foreign journalists and editors to work for six months in a US newsroom; the Daniel Pearl Media Internship Program which provides media internships to young Israelis and Palestinians who have attended a peace camp; and The Daniel Pearl Dialogues for Muslim-Jewish Understanding - a traveling public dialogue in which professors Judea Pearl and Akbar Ahmed discuss Muslim-Jewish relationships in a frank and respectful discourse.

The honorary board of the Daniel Pearl Foundation includes Christiane Amanpour, President William J. Clinton, Abdul Sattar Edhi, Danny Gill, John Hennessy, Ted Koppel, Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan, Sari Nusseibeh, Mariane Pearl, Itzhak Perlman, Harold Schulweiss, Craig Sherman, Paul Steiger, and Elie Wiesel.

References

  1. ^ Mount, Mike. "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: I beheaded American reporter", CNN, March 15, 2007.
  2. ^ "Al-Qaida No. 3 says he planned 9/11, other plots", MSNBC, March 15, 2007
  3. ^ Katherine Shrader (2007-03-15). "9/11 Mastermind Admits Killing Reporter". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved 2007-03-20. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |accessyear= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  4. ^ Alan Dershowitz (Editor), *What Israel Means to Me*, John Wiley & Sons (2006) pp. 279-286
  5. ^ http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/pearl101794.htm
  6. ^ Pellegrini, Frank (2002-02-21). "Daniel Pearl: 1963-2002". Time Magazine. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  7. ^ a b I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl, Ruth & Judea Pearl, eds., Jewish Lights Pub., January 2004. ISBN 1-58023-183-7
  8. ^ "Verbatim Transcript of Combatant Status Review Tribunal Hearing for ISN 10024 (ie. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed)" (PDF). US Department of Defense. 2007-03-10. Retrieved 2007-03-10. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |accessyear= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  9. ^ "Daniel Pearl". The Herald (Glasgow). Scottish Media Newspapers Limited. 2002-02-25. p. 14. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  10. ^ "Militant convicted of Pearl killing to rely on KSM Guantanamo confession on appeal". The Jurist. 2007-03-19. Retrieved 2007-03-20. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |accessyear= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  11. ^ "Pearl murder convict to appeal after confession". Reuters. 2007-03-19. Retrieved 2007-03-19. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |accessyear= (help)
  12. ^ "President dubs alleged Pearl killer MI6 spy". Gulf Times. 2006-09-26. Retrieved 2007-03-20. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |accessyear= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  13. ^ Pearl, Daniel, At Home in the World: Collected Writings from the Wall Street Journal, New York: Free Press, June 2002. ISBN 0-7432-4317-X
  14. ^ "Daniel Pearl Foundation". Daniel Pearl Foundation. Retrieved 2007-03-20. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |accessyear= (help)
  15. ^ "A Mighty Heart". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2007-03-20. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |accessyear= (help)
  16. ^ Christian Moerk (2005-07-31). "The Race To Put Pearl On Screen". New York Times. Retrieved 2007-03-20. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |accessyear= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  17. ^ "Who Killed Daniel Pearl?". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2007-03-20. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |accessyear= (help)
  18. ^ Pepe Escobar. ""Who Killed Daniel Pearl?"". Retrieved 2007-03-20. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |accessyear= (help)
  19. ^ William Dalrymple (2003-12-04). "Murder in Karachi". New York Review of Books. Retrieved 2007-03-20. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |accessyear= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  20. ^ Bernard-Henri Levy, William Dalrymple (2004-02-12). "Murder in Karachi: An Exchange". New York Review of Books. Retrieved 2007-03-20. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |accessyear= (help)
  21. ^ Bernard-Henri Levy (2003-10-23). "Who Killed Daniel Pearl?". BBC. Retrieved 2007-03-20. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |accessyear= (help)
  22. ^ "Zwick to Make Film About Daniel Pearl". Rotten Tomatoes. 2005-02-22. Retrieved 2007-03-20. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |accessyear= (help)
  23. ^ Kim, Victoria (2007-07-19). "Daniel Pearl's widow sues al-Qaeda". FT.com. Retrieved 2007. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  24. ^ Associated Press (2007-10-24). "Lawsuit over Pearl's death withdrawn". News.Yahoo.com. Retrieved 2007. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  25. ^ Associated Press (2007-04-16). "Slain Journalist Daniel Pearl Honored With Holocaust Victims". Editor & Publisher. Retrieved 2007. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  26. ^ [1]
  • Peter Popham (2002-02-23). "Video Reveals the Hideous Sacrifice of Captive Reporter; Pearl murder gruesome tape shows American speaking into camera as unknown killer slits his throat, then beheads him". The Independent. Newspaper Publishing PLC. p. 2. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |work= (help)
  • Timothy J. Burger (2002-02-22). "Kidnappers Cut Pearl's Throat Videotape Shows Newsman's Brutal Slaying". Daily News (New York). Daily News, L.P. p. 3. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |work= (help) - 'Fahad Naseem, one of the three militants accused of kidnapping Pearl, told a judge in Karachi yesterday that Pearl was kidnapped because he was "a Jew and is working against Islam."'
  • Salman Masood (2004-05-29). "Suspect in Reporter's Death Is Wanted in Attacks on Musharraf". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. p. Section A; Column 3; Foreign Desk; Pg. 2. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |work= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) - 'The intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that information from American intelligence agencies helped Pakistani investigators track down the ring involved in the plot. Information from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Al Qaeda's former head of operations who was captured in March 2002, aided the investigation, he said. American officials say they believe that Mr. Mohammed was the person who actually killed Mr. Pearl.'

See also

Further reading

External links

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