HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------
AP. 28 January 2002. Group Claiming to Have Seized WSJ Reporter Demands Better Treatment for Afghanistan Detainees. NEW YORK -- A Wall Street Journal reporter has apparently been taken hostage in Pakistan by a group seeking repatriation of detained Pakistani fighters in Cuba and the release of Afghanistan's former ambassador to Pakistan. An e-mail from "The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty" accused reporter Daniel Pearl of being a CIA officer posing as a journalist. Pearl, 38, a reporter based in Bombay, India, has been missing since Wednesday, when he went to visit a source near Karachi, Pakistan, for a story about terrorism, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. In Pakistan, police sources speaking on condition they not be identified told The Associated Press they believe Pearl was kidnapped by Harkat ul-Mujahedeen, which has close ties to al-Qaida and is on the U.S. government's terrorist organizations list. The e-mail sent to various U.S. newspapers was accompanied by four photographs purporting to show Pearl chained in captivity. One showed him hunched over with a gun to his head. The group demanded that Pakistani nationals detained by the U.S. government be allowed access to their lawyers and families, that Afghanistan's former ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, be handed over to Pakistan, and that F-16 fighter jets purchased by Pakistan in the 1980s be released. The request for the aircraft was apparently sent as an attachment within the e-mail and written in Urdu. The planes were never delivered because of U.S. sanctions related to Islamabad's nuclear-weapons program. The e-mail was sent using Microsoft's free e-mail service, Hotmail, with the user name "kidnapperguy," The New York Times reported Monday. The Journal quoted the e-mail as saying Pearl was being held "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 we will better the conditions of Mr. Pearl and all the other Americans that we capture." The e-mail demanded that Pakistanis being held at the camp in Cuba be returned to Pakistan and tried in Pakistani court. It also called for returning Zaeef to Pakistani custody. Zaeef, who was the Taliban's most-recognized spokesman, was deported from Pakistan to Afghanistan in early January and turned over to U.S. military forces. He is one of the highest-ranking Taliban officials in U.S. custody. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
