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 cubanB
The Cuban
Registered: 01/26/02
Posts: 25
Loc: Santa cruz .ca
Last seen: 17 years, 6 months
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 Kidnappers threaten to kill us reporter 
#536516 - 01/31/02 12:41 AM (22 years, 2 months ago) |
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this is bad news, this guy is horribly screwed, wonder if they can save him
uk.news.yahoo.com/020131/80/cra77.html
Kidnappers threaten to kill U.S. reporter
Click to enlarge photo
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The group that claims it has kidnapped a Wall Street Journal reporter in Pakistan has sent an e-mail to news organisations threatening to kill him within 24 hours unless the U.S. government releases Pakistani prisoners held in the Afghan war.
The e-mail, sent to The Wall Street Journal, CNN and The New York Times, among others, accused correspondent Daniel Pearl of being a spy for Israel. It also warned other U.S. journalists in Pakistan to leave the country within three days.
"We talked to Daniel Pearl and we learned that he is not a CIA officer but is the agent of Mossad (Israeli intelligence)," said the statement, which was obtained and translated from Urdu by Reuters. "So for this reason we are giving a warning that if America in 24 hours does not meet our demands, we will kill Daniel Pearl."
It was not immediately clear when the 24-hour deadline would lapse. An earlier e-mail identified the previously unknown group as "The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty."
Wednesday's e-mail was accompanied by photographs, including one of Pearl sitting on the floor with a pistol held toward his bowed head and another of him facing the camera with his wrists bound together by a thick chain.
The Wall Street Journal denied the claim the 38-year-old Pearl was a spy for Israel, as it has the one made in a previous e-mail that he was spying for the U.S. government.
"We have seen the latest communication from the people claiming to hold Danny Pearl," the newspaper said in a statement. "Mr. Pearl, a U.S. citizen born in the U.S. and a working journalist all of his adult life, is not an agent of any government or agency. He is a reporter for us -- nothing more or less. He cannot affect the policy of the U.S. or Pakistani government. Nor can we."
Pakistan had been one of the Taliban's closest allies but supported the U.S. campaign to oust the hard-line Afghan rulers as a punishment for protecting Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks on America. Many Pakistanis disagreed with the government and entered the neighbouring nation to aid the Taliban and bin Laden's al Qaeda forces.
APPEAL FOR DIALOGUE
In an interview with CNN, Marianne Pearl said she and her husband went to Pakistan because "we wanted to know more about the people and write about their views. We keep working on that same idea of how are we going to create a dialogue because we know the world is not easy.
"I am pregnant. I am going to have a baby. We are trying at our level to create a better world," said Marianne Pearl, who is also a journalist. "It sounds like big words but that's our life. ... I love Pakistan."
Pearl was working on a story about alleged shoe-bomber Richard Reid, who is being detained in the United States ahead of trial on charges he tried to blow up an airliner.
Reid allegedly travelled to Pakistan shortly before being caught on a plane in December while trying to detonate his explosive-laden sneakers.
Usually the Pearls conduct interviews together but Marianne told CNN the night Daniel was kidnapped she felt sick and had stayed behind.
In the Pakistan capital Islamabad, police said they had detained the leader of a radical Islamic group in connection with the kidnapping of Pearl, who went missing in the southern city of Karachi a week ago. Police said they arrested Mubarak Ali Gilani, leader of Jamaat al-Fuqra and considered him a prime suspect in the case.
Investigators have said Pearl, who is based in Bombay, India, met Gilani before he disappeared and police have detained and questioned a number of people close to the religious leader and al-Fuqra.
WARNING TO U.S. JOURNALISTS
The latest e-mail also called on U.S. journalists to leave Pakistan.
"The American journalists who are working in Pakistan, many of them in the disguise of journalists, are really spies. For this reason we are warning American journalists that they leave Pakistan in three days or else they will also be targets," the e-mail read.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists repeated its call for Pearl's release.
"His kidnappers have gained absolutely nothing by holding him hostage," CPJ executive director Ann Cooper said in a statement. "They will gain absolutely nothing by threatening to kill him. They will also gain nothing by threatening other journalists working in Pakistan."
A number of Pakistani and U.S. media organisations received an e-mail on Sunday saying Pearl had been kidnapped. It said Pearl, who it claimed worked for the CIA, was being kept in "inhumane" conditions to protest against the treatment of Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners held at a U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Wednesday's e-mail alluded to the Bush administration's decision to authorise secret military tribunals for some detainees and complained captives taken by the United States were not given a chance to prove their innocence.
The e-mail also said if the captors killed Pearl, they would then send food to his family to mimic the gesture of the U.S. military, which dropped food parcels over Afghanistan while it bombed the country.
Marianne Pearl said she hasn't slept for six days, but she remained hopeful her husband would be released. "I'm not desperate. If I stop believing in creating this dialogue, then I'd have to stop believing in everything else, so I can't do that. I'm pregnant."
Asked what she would say to her husband if she could speak to him now, she smiled and said, "I love you."
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cubanB
The Cuban
Registered: 01/26/02
Posts: 25
Loc: Santa cruz .ca
Last seen: 17 years, 6 months
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Re: Kidnappers threaten to kill us reporter [Re: cubanB]
#536517 - 01/31/02 12:43 AM (22 years, 2 months ago) |
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related story, still not found though
www.upi.com/view.cfm?Stor...2214-7749r
By Richard Sale
UPI Terrorism Correspondent
Published 1/30/2002 9:27 PM
Pakistani officials have arrested an Islamic cleric believed to be the prime suspect in the abduction of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, both Pakistani and U.S. State Department sources said Wednesday.
Pearl's whereabouts were still unknown, but a U.S. intelligence official confirmed "as probably genuine" an e-mail sent Wednesday morning to news organizations. The message threatened to kill Pearl within 24 hours and warned all "Amereekcan journalists" in Pakistan to leave within three days.
Aaron Bedy, a spokesman for the Wall Street Journal, told United Press International as of Wednesday evening the newspaper had not received further updates on Pearl or his condition.
Sheik Mubarak Ali Shan Gilani was arrested by Pakistani police in the northern city of Rawalpindi and transported to Karachi, State Department officials said. At least a dozen of his followers have also been detained.
News of the arrest followed a UPI exclusive report published Tuesday that said Gilani was the man Pearl was on his way to interview when he was kidnapped. The UPI report said U.S. intelligence officials suspected possible ties between Pearl's kidnappers and Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate.
Gilani -- also known as Mubarak Ali Shah and Sheik Mubarak Ali Jilani Hasmi -- leads an Islamic extremist group called Tanzaimul Fuqra.
Al Fuqra is a splinter group of the extremist Army of Muhammad, a jihadi organization recently banned by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf but which has had long-standing connections with senior ISI officials, State Department analysts said.
The links are so clear, said former CIA chief of counterterrorism Vince Cannistraro, that "Gilani has some former senior ISI official sitting on the board of his organization."
The e-mail accused Pearl of being an agent of Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, an allegation the Wall Street Journal immediately denied: "He is a reporter for us -- nothing more or less," a published statement said. "He cannot affect the policy of the U.S. or Pakistan government. Nor can we."
The e-mail accused other U.S. journalists of being spies as well.
According to U.S. intelligence officials, al Fuqra's members include African-American citizens wooed to follow a militant form of Islam. The group has carried out terrorist acts within the United States, including murder, robbery and welfare fraud, the bulk of the attacks occurring in the mid-to-late 1980s.
Cannistraro said some attacks continued in the mid-1990s, however, and included "the murder of the leader of a mosque in Tucson, Ariz." Lt. Michael Grys of the intelligence unit of the Colorado Spings, Colo., Police Department confirmed the information, telling UPI he investigated the group in 1989 and has first-hand knowledge of the Tucson case.
Al Fuqra, which used to be known as Jamaat-ul-Fuqra, is described in the State Department's 1998 "Patterns of Global Terrorism" as follows: "Seeks to purify Islam through violence. Members have purchased isolated rural compounds in North America to live communally, practice their faith and insulate themselves from Western culture. (Al) Fuqra members have attacked a variety of targets that they view as enemies of Islam, including Muslims they regard as heretics and Hindus."
U.S. intelligence officials said al Fuqra has close ties with Pakistan's ISI, prompting suspicion that the ISI was involved in the reporter's abduction. Former State Department and CIA counterterrorism expert, Larry Johnson, told United Press International: "It's either ISI or someone trying very hard to make it look like ISI."
Al Fuqra also has close ties with another Pakistani extremist group, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen -- an organization that, significantly, was left off Musharraf's Jan. 12 list of banned organizations, and which has known ties to al Qaida, U.S. intelligence officials said.
Pearl, who was doing research on Richard Reid, the shoe-bomb suspect who was allegedly trained by al Qaida in Afghanistan, has been missing since last Wednesday.
According to UPI sources, Pearl had gone to the U.S. embassy in Islamabad asking for guidance about plans to interview Gilani, a supposed contact of Reid's.
Pearl was to be taken to the Tanzaimul Fuqra interview by two Pakistani guides. Embassy officials strongly advised against his going alone, without an interpreter or local assistant, State Department officials said.
Pearl disappeared from Karachi last Wednesday night. The State Department confirmed a taxi driver told police that he took Pearl to the Metropole Hotel where he was last seen.
Later, e-mail messages arriving at the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and news organizations in Pakistan, announced that Pearl had been kidnapped and detailed conditions for his release.
A group calling itself "The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty" demanded repatriation of the Pakistani prisoners taken from Afghanistan to Cuba and the release of F-16 fighter aircraft purchased in the 1980s by the Pakistani government. The delivery of the planes was canceled by Congress in 1990 in response to Pakistan's continuing efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
"The kidnappers' conditions are all over the lot," Johnson pointed out. "What terrorist is going to ask for release of F-16s? They aren't a terrorist's weapon of choice."
Such demands smack more of ISI involvement, he told UPI.
In addition to Israel's Mossad, the kidnappers earlier accused Pearl of working for the CIA. Both The Wall Street Journal and the CIA promptly denied that the agency had any relation with the reporter.
But U.S. intelligence officials noted that Pearl has been the head of the Wall Street Journal's bureau in Bombay, India, for the last two years, and one said: "That could have meant trouble for (Pearl). Everyone out there thinks a journalist is a spy and his being in India wouldn't help."
Tensions between India and Pakistan have remained at a high level since Dec. 13 attacks on the Indian Parliament by Pakistani-based jihadi groups that killed a dozen people, including the five terrorist suspects.
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 Innvertigo
Vote Libertarian!!
Registered: 02/08/01
Posts: 16,296
Loc: Crackerville, Michigan U...
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 Re: Kidnappers threaten to kill us reporter [Re: cubanB]
#537564 - 02/01/02 07:00 AM (22 years, 2 months ago) |
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It's too bad we don't negotiate with terrorists....i think they are bluffing..at least i hope they are.
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America....FUCK YEAH!!!
Words of Wisdom: Individual Rights BEFORE Collective Rights
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -- Thomas Jefferson
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wingnutx
Registered: 09/24/00
Posts: 2,287
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Re: Kidnappers threaten to kill us reporter [Re: cubanB]
#541557 - 02/05/02 05:14 PM (22 years, 2 months ago) |
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Everyone's a Mossad agent.
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Innvertigo
Vote Libertarian!!
Registered: 02/08/01
Posts: 16,296
Loc: Crackerville, Michigan U...
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Re: Kidnappers threaten to kill us reporter [Re: wingnutx]
#541577 - 02/05/02 05:38 PM (22 years, 2 months ago) |
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Are you?
--------------------
America....FUCK YEAH!!!
Words of Wisdom: Individual Rights BEFORE Collective Rights
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -- Thomas Jefferson
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