AP. 27 January 2002. Photos Show Missing U.S. Reporter.
NEW YORK -- A group claiming to have seized a Wall Street Journal reporter missing in Pakistan said he was being held in "inhuman conditions" comparable to those of suspected terrorists in U.S. custody, the newspaper reported Sunday. 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, the Journal reported Sunday on its Web site. The newspaper said the e-mail was accompanied by four photographs of Pearl, with one showing him with a gun to his head, and demanded better treatment for fighters being held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. 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. A number of Harkat fighters were known to have been killed in Afghanistan during the bombing campaign. 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 newspaper said. Steven Goldstein, a vice president of Dow Jones &; Co., the Journal's owner, said the photographs appear to be legitimate. Both the newspaper and the Central Intelligence Agency denied that Pearl worked for the agency. CIA agency spokeswoman Anya Guilsher would not comment on the group named in the e-mail or its demands. 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, than we will better the conditions of Mr. Pearl and all other Americans that we capture." The group also called for the release of Afghanistan's former ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, who was the Taliban's most-recognized spokesman. He was deported from Pakistan to Afghanistan in early January and turned over to U.S. military forces, and is one of the highest-ranking Taliban officials in U.S. custody. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews
