Posted on 05/16/2002 12:52:54 PM PDT by aristeides
Thu May 16, 2:52 PM ET
By NADEEM AFZAL, Associated Press Writer
KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) - Three men arrested Thursday in the slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl directed police to where they said his body had been buried, a senior police official said.
Police dug up a body in an open field in a poor neighborhood on the western edge of Karachi, the official said on condition of anonymity. The official said the body was not being removed from the site while the scene was being examined and tests conducted to determine identity.
No further information was immediately available about the three new suspects.
Four Islamic radicals have been on trial since April 22 on charges of murder and kidnapping. They have pleaded innocent.
Pearl was kidnapped Jan. 23 in the southern port city of Karachi and a gruesome three-minute video was delivered to U.S. officials in Karachi a month later showing Pearl's brutal death.
He was researching Pakistani extremists and their possible links to Richard C. Reid, who was arrested in December on a flight from Paris to Miami with explosives in his shoes.
After his disappearance, e-mails with photos of a captive Pearl were sent to foreign and local news publications. They were signed by a previously unknown group demanding better treatment for the suspected Taliban and al-Qaida men being held in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba.
U.S. investigators traced the e-mails to one of the defendants, Fahad Naseem, who in turn identified a British-born militant, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, as the mastermind, police said. Naseem's cousin, Salman Saqib, and former policeman Sheikh Mohammed Adeel are also on trial.
The FBI (news - web sites) was called in to assist Pakistan soon after Pearl was kidnapped.
The court trying the four resumed its hearing Thursday with the cross-examination of two FBI agents by defense attorneys, who claim the video is a fake and should not be admitted as evidence.
The trial is closed to reporters, who have to rely on defense attorneys and prosecutors for details of the proceedings.
Defense attorney Rai Bashir said that video expert John Falgon, who had testified about obtaining the gruesome videotape that showed Pearl with his throat cut, admitted that "such videos can be prepared through computers."
In separate testimony, Bashir said that the Ronald Joseph "admitted that all such e-mails can be fed into computers by anyone when the computer is hacked."
He also pointed out that "nowhere in the e-mails" retrieved by Joseph from the laptop "did the alleged kidnappers make demands of ransom or threats."
The prosecution has called several witnesses to try to make their case that the defendants lured Pearl to the restaurant in Karachi from where he was kidnapped, took photographs of him in captivity and then circulated the photographs and threats via e-mail.
Chief prosecutor Raja Quereshi did not comment on the day's testimony.
Saeed admitted his role in the kidnapping during a pretrial court appearance Feb. 14 but later recanted. His statement is inadmissible at the trial because it was not made under oath.
The court was expected to rule Friday on a prosecution request to send a commission to Europe to obtain a statement from Daniel Pearl's widow, Mariane.
Terrorist can be so confusing.
Oh. I guess that makes it all OK, then.
God will know his own...
And Daniel Pearl may find a resting place of his liking.
Police said they were directed to the body by three men who were arrested late Thursday evening in Karachi in connection with the kidnapping and killing of Pearl, 38.
The three men said they had buried Pearl at that location, on the outskirts of Karachi, police said.
Police said they went to the scene and found the buried body of a white male.
Pakistani government sources told CNN they are fairly sure that the body is Pearl's. DNA testing will be conducted to confirm the identity, they said.
These were recently arrested, last Thursday I think the article said. I wonder how the police found them, and could their arrest be part of the plan all along to make certain that the head guy isn't convicted of killing Pearl? Just strikes me as strange that within a week of their arrests, they give up the location of the body, and makes me wonder if they got themselves arrested in order to further complicate the trial.
I sure hope that impressions are being taken, for dental record comparison. Also, I hope it's him. The terrorists were hiding it on purpose in order to add as much INSULT as possible to as much INJURY as possible.
I'm surprised somebody offered the location of the body at all. Either it's not his, or or someone discovered they had a heart in there somewhere, OR they were hoping it would gain them a lighter sentence.
They caught these 3 guys because they've known where they were all this time.
Then again, I expected them never to find the body at ALL. Which is why I'd rather wait for a positive ID.
My sources indicated this really IS his body, and it was treated in a way no Christian or Jew would ever treat a corpse: Judaism teaches respect for the dead and would not desecrate a corpse in this way.
Assuming they can actually read, that is.
That's why he had such a cocky attitude in his press briefing. Rmember, he said Pearl was meddling in intelligence matters, insinuating that he should not have been. The ISI were on his tail all the time; a WSJ American Jewish reporter would not have been allowed to travel around Karachi without the blessings of the ISI.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.