Journalist’s widow condemns ‘cruel and cowardly’ murder

The widow of American journalist Daniel Pearl today condemned his ‘‘cruel and cowardly’’ murder but urged the US not to seek revenge.

Mariane Pearl, who is seven months pregnant with the couple’s first child, said her husband had ‘‘carried the flag to end terrorism’’.

A gruesome video of the 38-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter’s final moments was said to show his captors slitting his throat.

He was kidnapped in the Pakistani city of Karachi on January 23 and until yesterday his family had refused to give up hope that he was still alive.

In a statement, Mrs Pearl said: ‘‘Revenge would be easy, but it is far more valuable in my opinion to address this problem of terrorism with enough honesty to question our own responsibility as nations and as individuals for the rise of terrorism.’’

Mrs Pearl, a French citizen and herself a journalist, said her husband was ‘‘not a hero, not a spy, but an ordinary man and great journalist who has travelled the world to reveal facts and seek the truth’’.

She said: ‘‘A video has been produced of him forced to read a statement and then showing him dead and stabbed in the most cruel and cowardly manner.

‘‘From this act of barbarism, terrorists expect all of us to bow our heads and retreat as victims forever threatened by their ruthlessness.

‘‘What terrorists forget is that they may seize the life of an innocent man or the lives of many innocent people as they did on September 11, but they cannot claim the spirit or faith of individual human beings.

‘‘The terrorists who say they killed my husband may have taken his life, but they did not take his spirit. Danny is my life. They may have taken my life, but they did not take my spirit.

‘‘I promise you that the terrorists did not defeat my husband no matter what they did to him, nor did they succeed in seizing his dignity or value as a human being. As his wife, I feel proud of Danny.’’

Mrs Pearl said she hoped that humanity would defeat terrorism and ‘‘the evil people casting a shadow upon our world’’.

She added: ‘‘My other hope now, in my seventh month of pregnancy, is that I will be able to tell our son that his father carried the flag to end terrorism, raising an unprecedented demand among people from all countries not for revenge but for the values we all share: love, compassion, friendship and citizenship far transcending the so-called clash of civilizations.’’

Governments have a ‘‘worldwide responsibility’’ to find ways of defeating terrorism, she said.

‘‘No individual alone will be able to fight terrorism. No state alone will be able to wage this battle.

‘‘We need to overcome cultural and religious differences, motivating our governments to work hand in hand with each other, perhaps in an unprecedented way,’’ she said.

Pakistan’s president Pervez Musharraf has ordered the arrest of ‘‘each and every one of the gang of terrorists’’ involved in the murder.

In Beijing, US President George W Bush said: ‘‘All Americans are sad and angry to learn of the murder. May God bless Daniel Pearl.’’

A British former public schoolboy and London School of Economics dropout, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, has admitted to being involved in the kidnapping.

Four people have been arrested and charged in the case. They include Saeed, 27, the alleged mastermind, who is from Wanstead, east London, and three men accused of sending e-mails announcing Pearl’s abduction.

Yesterday one of the jailed suspects, Fahad Naseem, told a Karachi magistrate that Saeed told him two days before the kidnapping that he was going to seize someone who is ‘‘anti-Islam and a Jew’’.

Pearl, a reporter with the Wall Street Journal for 12 years, was kidnapped while researching links between Pakistani extremists and Londoner Richard Reid, the so-called ‘‘shoe bomber’’ arrested in December on a transatlantic flight.

The tape of his final moments was obtained by a Pakistani journalist who gave it the US consulate in Karachi yesterday, a senior Pakistani official said.

Sources close to the investigation said the video contained scenes of Pearl in captivity, the slitting of his throat from behind and his body being dragged across the floor.

His final words were said to have been recorded as, ‘‘I am a Jew, my mother is a Jew’’. His body has not been found.

Pakistani analysts believe the kidnapping was staged to strike back at Musharraf for his support for the US-led war on terrorism in Afghanistan and for his crackdown last month against Islamic extremists in Pakistan.

Since Saeed’s arrest, the focus of the investigation has shifted to Amjad Faruqi, who is believed to have carried out the kidnapping.

Police suspect that Faruqi - known to Pearl by the name Imtiaz Siddiqi - called the journalist twice on the night he disappeared, apparently making Pearl think a meeting was being set up with a senior Islamic militant.

Faruqi is believed to be a member of Harkat ul-Mujahedeen, a banned Islamic extremist group with ties to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida network.

Harkat ul-Mujahedeen is active in the struggle against Indian rule in disputed Kashmir, a Himalayan region claimed by both India and Pakistan.