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Missing American Journalist Abducted, Pakistani Police Clueless
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| Journalist Daniel Pearl
held at gunpoint in photo sent to media outlets. |
ISLAMABAD, Jan 28 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents arrived in Pakistan Monday to join the search for an American journalist believed to have been kidnapped six days ago, police sources said.
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl disappeared in the southern port city of Karachi last Wednesday after telling his wife he was going to interview an Islamic group leader.
Pakistani police searching for Pearl said on Monday they were checking possible links to Islamic groups, but still had no idea where he was, reported news agencies.
"A team from the FBI is in Karachi to assist and coordinate the probe," an interior ministry official here told AFP.
Pearl is believed to have been kidnapped by a group in Karachi last Wednesday, after a previously unknown Islamic group claimed responsibility for his disappearance.
"The investigators have questioned a large number of people linked to various Islamic groups to find tangible leads as they also assess reports of the kidnapping," a senior police officer said, adding the case was still being treated as a missing person investigation.
A group calling itself the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty admitted kidnapping Pearl in an e-mail message sent to various newspapers in the United States.
The message contained pictures of Pearl in captivity and claimed he was a "CIA officer" who was "posing as a journalist," according to a report in the
Wall Street Journal.
The photos showed Pearl, 38, held at gunpoint; two others showed him chained; and the fourth showed him holding up a newspaper, CNN reported.
It said Pearl was being kept "in very inhuman circumstances quite similar in fact to the way Pakistanis and nationals of other sovereign countries are being kept in Cuba by the American Army".
"If the Americans keep our countrymen in better conditions, then we will better the conditions of Mr. Pearl and all other Americans that we capture," the message added.
"We saw that email message and are looking for this group, but it is relatively unknown to us... We are looking at every option," a police official told news agencies. Police earlier said they thought the email was a hoax, while both the
Journal and CIA have said Pearl never worked for the agency.
Dow Jones and Company vice president Steven Goldstein said in a statement Sunday that those who seized Pearl "have made a mistake."
"Mr. Pearl, as all Wall Street Journal reporters, is solely a journalist and has written regularly on a variety of subjects," the statement said.
"He has no connection whatever with the government of the United States, including its Central Intelligence Agency. As a private citizen employed by an independent newspaper, neither Mr. Pearl, nor we, can change the policies of the United States or Pakistan."
A spokesman for the CIA has also denied that Pearl was working for the agency.
Pakistani police said the scope of the investigation had been widened but they had not been able to trace Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani, the man Pearl had said he was going to interview when he disappeared.
Gilani is the caretaker of an Islamic shrine in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore and heads a group called Tanzeem-ul-Fuqra.
Police officials said authorities in central Punjab and southern Sindh provinces were notified to step up investigations into the matter and focus on Islamic groups, including some seen as close to banned pro-Kashmiri organizations and the al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden.
Police in Lahore, capital of populous Punjab province, said on Saturday they had briefly detained and interrogated five men from a Sunni Muslim group.
Intelligence sources said Gilani's organization had links with Richard Reid, the alleged shoe bomber overpowered on a Paris-Miami flight on December 22.
Reporters Without Borders, a group that supports press freedom, said Pearl was investigating Reid.
In a statement released Friday, Reporters Without Borders' general secretary Robert Ménard expressed the group's concern over the matter, noting that it believes the Pakistani government is doing "everything in their power" to help find Pearl, reported CNN.
The cable network said it learned that Pearl's wife - a French citizen now living in Karachi, Pakistan - is several months pregnant. Pearl, 38, has worked for
The Wall Street Journal for 12 years.
Ghulam Hasnain, a Pakistani reporter working for Time magazine, apparently abducted in Karachi Tuesday, has returned home but has not commented on his abduction.
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