By Peter Baker and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 24, 2002; Page A16ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 23 -- Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl had been cut in the chest and was probably already dead when Islamic extremists sliced his throat in front of a camera, according to an analysis of the videotape by U.S. law enforcement officials.
The 3 1/2-minute digital videotape delivered to authorities in Karachi, Pakistan, included several different scenes that had been spliced together, making it impossible to determine exactly how or when Pearl was killed, according to the analysis. But the tape made clear he was not awake when his throat was slit.
The new details about the tape emerged as Pakistani authorities warned foreign embassies and businesses that Pearl's abduction and killing may have been part of a wider threat against Westerners living and working here. Investigators have begun searching for an Arab believed to be involved in the Pearl case and said they were reassessing whether his kidnapping and killing were linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network.
"In the beginning, we had totally discounted the al Qaeda factor in the case," said a Pakistani source involved in the investigation. "But now we are certainly chasing leads that may take us to al Qaeda's doors."
Pearl, 38, the Journal's South Asia bureau chief, disappeared on Jan. 23 while researching a story about Islamic radicals in Pakistan. Two days after his death was confirmed, investigators still had not found his body or tracked down four additional suspects.
Officials in Washington and Islamabad have begun considering the possibility of extraditing those accused of his death to the United States for trial. However, some Pakistani officials said they might resist such a request, raising the possibility of a conflict between two countries that have become close allies in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Investigators from both countries have been scrutinizing the videotape for clues to the identities of Pearl's killers and the whereabouts of his body. Some officials have concluded he was slain soon after he was kidnapped, probably Jan. 31, a day after his abductors sent an e-mail threatening to kill him within 24 hours if their demands were not met. Police sources and analysts now believe the demands, including the release of Pakistani prisoners held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were never serious and that Pearl's captors always intended to kill him.
According to the FBI analysis provided to Journal executives, the videotape begins by showing Pearl reciting parts of his biography, including the fact that he was Jewish. Three sources said he identified his father as being Jewish, although other reports have said he cited his mother.
Pearl then speaks about the Pakistani prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, delivering apparently scripted lines similar to those included in an e-mail sent by his captors. According to the analysis, the tape then cuts to other scenes, and it is unclear whether they occurred immediately afterward or hours or days later.
The first subsequent scene shows Pearl with superimposed images of Afghanistan behind him. Then, after another splice, the tape shows part of Pearl's body with a four-inch incision in his chest. The wound was not fresh, and he was not bleeding, suggesting Pearl could have been cut even days earlier, according to the analysis. He showed no signs of life at that point.
After another editing cut, Pearl appears lying down. The arms of two men wearing short-sleeved, striped shirts are seen as one reaches over with a knife and slashes Pearl's throat. Pearl was not conscious at the time, and investigators studying the tape said they believe he was probably already dead because he did not react to the touch of the knife.
"We were told that there was absolutely no movement whatsoever at the point of contact with the knife," said Steven Goldstein, vice president and spokesman for Dow Jones & Co., the Journal's parent company, who confirmed the account. Experts believe even a drugged victim would show a physical response to such an act. Several sources said the final scene shows Pearl's decapitated body, the knife sitting by his chest and one of his captors holding his severed head.
While much attention has focused on reports that Pearl was forced to say he was Jewish before being killed, the videotape shows that he was not necessarily slain immediately afterward, as initial accounts suggested. However, it has reinforced suspicions among investigators that the Pakistani culprits had an Arab accomplice.
"The fact that Daniel was forced to accept that he and his father were Jewish gives a hint that the same Arab might also be present when Pearl was slaughtered before the camera," said a senior Pakistani security official.
Investigators said they learned of a possible Arab accomplice while interrogating relatives of Pakistani suspect Amjad Farooqi, who remains at large. "We have conclusively discovered that an Arab citizen was constantly with Amjad Farooqi while he and several other persons were holding Daniel at a secret location in Karachi," a police investigator said. Investigators said Pearl may have been held in an underground cell.
The suspected Arab connection has led investigators to look harder for evidence that al Qaeda was involved in Pearl's kidnapping and killing. The prime suspect in custody, prominent Islamic radical Sheik Omar Saeed, spent five years in an Indian prison for kidnapping four Westerners before he was released in 1999, in a deal with hijackers of a plane that was taken to Kandahar, Afghanistan.
A few months later, he trained at a terrorist facility near Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and has told police he met with bin Laden and several of his top lieutenants. Documents found at an al Qaeda house in Kabul after the Taliban fell last fall appeared to link al Qaeda to the Kandahar hijacking.
The Pakistani government has taken extra security precautions in recent days because of the possibility that the Pearl kidnapping is part of a broader campaign aimed at Americans and other foreigners here.
About two weeks ago, someone telephoned authorities threatening to bomb the U.S. consulate in Karachi, a port in southern Pakistan. Three senior Pakistani police officials also received calls around the same time warning them to drop the Pearl case and citing personal details about each of their families in an attempt to scare them. All of those calls were made from the same mobile telephone used to set up a meeting with Pearl at a restaurant, officials said. The reporter disappeared after going to the restaurant in Karachi.
Pakistani officials said today they had been told by their embassy in Washington that the United States may seek extradition of Saeed for conspiring to kill American citizens. However, they indicated that Washington should not expect them to automatically agree. Pakistan allowed U.S. agents to take Ramzi Yousef to New York in 1995 for trial in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and Mir Aimal Kansi to Virginia in 1997 for a shooting outside CIA headquarters.
A U.S. request to turn over Saeed could produce "a protracted legal battle that may last years," a Pakistani Interior Ministry official said today, noting that the United States and Pakistan have no extradition treaty. The official suggested that "serious legal complications" could also arise because Saeed is a British citizen and London would have to be consulted.
Pakistani officials are worried that sending Saeed to the United States could disclose ties between Pakistani secret services and Jaish-i-Muhammad, the terrorist group he is affiliated with that is fighting Indian rule in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. One source said that during his interrogations by investigators, Saeed himself has appeared supremely confident that he would not be extradited.
Khan reported from Karachi.
