Pakistan widens hunt for reporter's kidnappers

Pakistani police are now examining Karachi’s notorious criminal gangs in their hunt for kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Twelve days after the journalist’s abduction, authorities said leads into Islamic extremist groups had started to run dry.

Last night the body of a light-skinned man in his late 30s was found beside a road, sparking fears it was Pearl. Police later said it was an Iranian.

‘‘We continue to believe that Danny is alive,’’ said Steve Goldstein, a vice president of Dow Jones & Co, the Journal’s owner.

The investigation has been complicated because of several e-mails purportedly from the kidnappers which police now believe were hoaxes.

Police still consider Islamic extremists, especially Harkat ul-Mujahedeen, as the most likely suspects in Pearl’s abduction on January 23.

Syed Kamal Shah, the police chief in Sindh province, today said the investigation has expanded to other provinces.

Pearl, 38, the Journal’s South Asian bureau chief, was working on a story about Islamic fundamentalists and was trying to arrange an interview with the leader of a small militant group, Sheik Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani.

Gilani was arrested last week, but investigators say it is uncertain whether he played a role in the abduction.

Despite the government’s insistence that it is making progress, investigators said police have no firm idea who is holding Pearl, or where. Pakistani authorities hope for a breakthrough before President Pervez Musharraf visits the United States next week.

Pakistani police, however, have been unable to find two primary suspects, Mohammed Hashim and Bashir Ahmad Shabbir. Hashim, also known as Arif, is believed to be a Harkat ul-Mujahedeen activist and Shabbir was a follower of Gilani, police said.

Pearl had contacted both suspects and four days before the kidnapping, Shabbir e-mailed Pearl and told him an interview with Gilani had been arranged in Karachi, police said.

A top-level government task force has discussed the possibility that one of Karachi’s criminal gangs, which flourish in the city of 12 million, abducted Pearl.

Mukhtar Ahmad Sheik, Sindh province’s security chief, also said the investigation was not limited to religious extremists.

Pakistani and US news media have received at least six e-mails purportedly from the kidnappers. But police consider only two of them genuine. They included photos of Pearl.

Investigators said US authorities, including the FBI, were trying to trace the two e-mails. Late last night, police surrounded an apartment complex in Karachi’s eastern Gulistan-e-Jauhar neighbourhood, from which they suspected the genuine messages may have been sent.

Police said yesterday that a 16-year-old boy in the eastern border city of Lahore admitted sending two of the bogus e-mails. He had been transferred to Karachi for interrogation, police said.