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Pakistan
Search for Missing US Journalist
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| Wall Street
Journal reporter abducted in Pakistan |
KARACHI,
Jan. 28 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Pakistani security forces have
expanded the search for Daniel Pearl, a U.S. journalist who disappeared while
attempting to meet people with suspected Al-Qaeda links, police said Saturday.
They did not rule out the prospect that Pearl, a Wall Street Journal
correspondent, had been abducted while meeting sources in Karachi.
According
to information on the Wall Street Journal website, a Pakistani group has
claimed to be holding him and has released a number of photographs showing Pearl
in captivity.
"We
have expanded the scope of the search and the possibility of kidnapping is
there, particularly with the type of people he was supposed to meet,"
Karachi police chief Tariq Jamil told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Jamil
said police "have been dispatched to different parts of the country in the
search." Police were also guarding a house in the seaside Clifton area of
Karachi where Pearl had been staying with friends.
The
38-year-old journalist had been in this port city for the past three weeks,
working on a story about Richard Reid, the alleged shoe-bomber charged with
trying to blow up an airliner last month, and the Al-Qaeda network of Osama bin
Laden, press group, Reporters Sans Frontiers (Reporters without Borders) said
Saturday.
He
was supposed to meet Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani, head of an Islamic group called
Tanzeem-ul-Fuqra, through two Pakistani contacts, Mohammad Bashir and Mohammad
Arif. "We are now trying to locate Gilani, Bashir and Arif, but so far
cannot find any clue of their whereabouts," a police officer told AFP on
condition of anonymity.
Pakistani
police said Sunday they had interrogated five men in connection with the case,
but had no idea where the journalist was, news agencies reported. They also
dismissed as a hoax an e-mail saying Pearl had been kidnapped by a group calling
itself "The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani
Sovereignty."
A
U.S. official said the e-mail stated Pearl had been kidnapped because he was an
agent for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and was being kept in
"inhumane" conditions to protest against U.S. treatment of Taliban and
al Qaeda prisoners being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The CIA has denied Pearl
worked for the agency.
Police
in Lahore, capital of populous Punjab province, said the five men who were
briefly detained were involved with a Sunni Muslim group thought to have links
to banned pro-Kashmiri fighters and the Al-Qaeda network. "They were
interrogated in connection with Daniel Pearl's disappearance," said the
Lahore police official, who asked not to be identified.
"Pearl
was actually trying to interview the head of that group who is reported to have
good connections and contacts in groups close to Al-Qaeda," he said. The
five were released after four hours of questioning.
"We
don't have any clue where he is," Brigadier Mukhtar Ahmed, interior
secretary for Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital, told news
agencies. "We are making our efforts to trace him and have extended the
investigation to all four provinces. Right now I can only say the process of
investigation and search is going on," he added.
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