Services planned to mark death of reporter Pearl

Interfaith memorial services will be held in major cities around the world, including London, over the next few days to mark the anniversary of the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

The journalist, 38, was kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan, in January last year while researching links between Pakistani extremists and Briton Richard Reid, who was later convicted of trying to blow up a plane with a shoe bomb.

A grisly video-tape received by US diplomats a month later showed Pearl’s murder.

Services have been scheduled at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles today, at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York on Sunday and at Beth Tzedec Congregation in Toronto on Monday.

Other services are planned in London, Paris and Jerusalem.

Pearl’s father, Professor Judea Pearl, said one of the main points of the interfaith services was to show his son’s killers that their crime had brought people of different religions together.

“Here we are, people of different faiths who would not normally meet, speaking together and taking a stand against the hatred that is now on the rise in the world,” said Prof Pearl, a computer science professor at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Four Islamic militants, including British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, were convicted in Pakistan in July of killing Pearl. The Briton was sentenced to death while the other three were jailed for life. All four are appealing their sentences.

During their trial, Pearl’s dismembered body was found by police in a shallow grave near an Islamic religious school in Karachi.