Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter investigating links between Al Qaeda and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002. Pearl was a gifted writer and co-founded the Stanford Commentary while studying at Stanford University. He was loved by many and his death has become an inspiration to others.
Daniel Pearl was a Wall Street Journal reporter who rose to worldwide fame after his 2002 kidnapping and murder. Militant terrorists in Pakistan kidnapped Pearl as he investigated the war on terrorism. Daniel Pearl would become part of the story he was investigating, an innocent death in a war that most of the world doesn’t want.
Daniel Pearl was born on October 10, 1963 in Princeton, New Jersey. A gifted writer from an early age, Pearl co-founded the Stanford Commentary while a student at Stanford University. After only a few weeks at the San Francisco Business Times, he moved to the Wall Street Journal in 1990. While working for the Journal, Pearl moved from Atlanta to Washington and then to London as a Middle East correspondent.
Pearl’s next role would be as South Asia Bureau Chief for the Journal, located in Bombay. It was here that he began his own investigation, reporting stories about the War on Terror. Reports from him included accounts of money laundering by Al Qaeda and the story of a Sudanese pharmaceutical company that was misidentified by the United States as an arms factory.
In 2002, Daniel Pearl found himself in Pakistan investigating links between Al Qaeda and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). He was also investigating reports that Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh had deposited US$100,000 (USD) into Mohammed Atta’s US account. Mohammed Atta was at the time the director general of the ISI and an operational chief of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City.
On January 23, 2002, Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in Karachi. Terrorists believed they had kidnapped a major media figure. Photographs began appearing around the world of a handcuffed Pearl with a gun to her head. The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistan’s Sovereignty claimed responsibility for the kidnapping and stated that unless their demands were met, Pearl would be killed.
Included in the kidnapper’s demands on the United States was the return of Pakistani prisoners to Pakistan and an end to the American presence in Pakistan. Despite interventions by heads of state, religious leaders and many others, Daniel Pearl’s murder was confirmed on February 21, 2002. On March 21, 2002, three suspects and Briton Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh were charged with Pearl’s murder . In the end they were all convicted and Sheikh was sentenced to death.
According to friends who knew Daniel Pearl, he was a man who loved life, people and the diversity of the world’s cultures. He was loved by many others in return. Since his death, the life and spirit of Daniel Pearl has become an inspiration to many.
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