The Pearl Project
The Truth Left Behind
Inside the Kidnapping and Murder of Daniel Pearl
THE CENTER FOR
PUBLIC INTEGRITY
ICIJ
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NTERNATIONAL
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CONTENTS
The Pearl Project spent more than three years investigating the roles of 27 men linked to the 2002 kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl
Pakistani and U.S. officials are led to the remains of Daniel Pearl four months after his kidnapping by a miltant arrested for an unrelated hotel bombing.
After “shoe bomber” Richard Reid tries to blow up a jet in late 2001, Pearl investigates if Reid had ties to a radical Pakistani cleric, Sheik Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani, and tries to arrange a meeting with him.
British-born Omar Sheikh, once jailed for allegedly kidnapping Western tourists, offers to introduce Pearl to the extremist Muslim leader Sheik Mubarak Ali Shah as part of a trap to kidnap the journalist.
Omar Sheikh recruits a team to kidnap Pearl, finds a Karachi safe house to keep Pearl in captivity, and hires messengers to tell the world of the kidnapper’s demands.
Pearl is picked up on Jan. 23, 2002, for a promised introduction to a radical cleric, but is instead taken to a remote area where guards chain him to an old car engine in a small building.
The Pearl Project
The Truth Left Behind
Inside the Kidnapping and Murder of Daniel Pearl
CONTENTS
Photos of Pearl bound in chains are included in the first e-mailed ransom note that suggests he was a bargaining chip for the release of Al Qaeda prisoners. But, the same day a Pakistani newspaper reports Pearl is Jewish, another note is sent warning that Pearl would be executed.
Al Qaeda operatives Khalid Sheikh Mohammed arrives at the safehouse to behead Pearl. Mohammed later tells the FBI he was drawn in by a senior Al Qaeda leader who said the kidnappers didn’t know what to do with Pearl and that Al Qaeda should “take advantage of it.”
Police trace e-mailed ransom notes to a cyber cafe customer, who says he was hired by Omar Sheikh, the kidnapping mastermind. Sheikh’s family members persuade him to surrender to local authorities.
Omar Sheikh tells the FBI that he did not plan to kill Pearl, but captors had to hold him once newspapers revealed he was Jewish. On Feb. 21, 2002, the FBI is tipped about a man offering to sell a videotape that showed Pearl’s murder and FBI agents pose as reporters to obtain it.
After a three-month trial of Omar Sheikh and three others that is closed to the public, all four are convicted on July 15, 2002, of murdering Pearl.
An FBI agent analyzes the Pearl murder video and matches a distinctive bulging vein in the murder’s hand to a CIA photo of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s hand.
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