Pakistani Officials Conduct DNA Tests to Determine if Pearl's Body Was Found

May 17, 2002

KARACHI, Pakistan — Police said Friday that blood and hair samples were sent for DNA testing to confirm whether a dismembered body found in a shallow grave is that of American reporter Daniel Pearl.


The body was found near a blood-spattered shed where authorities believe Pearl was held before his videotaped murder. In the shack, police found a chair that resembled one in pictures sent to news agencies by Pearl's kidnappers, Mansour Mughal, the chief investigator into Pearl's disappearance, said in a telephone interview.

Samples of blood on the walls of the shed were taken for DNA testing, Mughal said. The jacket of the track suit that Pearl was photographed wearing was also found buried in the grave with the body, he said.

A hair sample was also taken from the body found in a shallow grave in a field not far from the shed, Mughal said.

"We think this is the room where Pearl may have been held for two or three days," Mughal said.

The body that was discovered nearby was cut into 10 pieces, including a severed head, he said. A videotape delivered to U.S. officials in Karachi on Feb. 21 had shown Pearl being beheaded.

Earlier Friday, Pakistan's presidential spokesman said police were "quite sure" that the body is that of Pearl, who disappeared four months ago while researching links to international terrorism in Karachi.

"They are still examining the body, but from the clues they found last night they are quite sure," the spokesman, Gen. Rashid Quereshi, told The Associated Press.

Police were led to the body by three newly arrested suspects in the kidnapping, who told them the body was Pearl.

Dr. Qasim Soomro, Sindh provincial police surgeon, said a team of four forensic scientists was taken to examine the body, which was not removed to protect the site and the evidence.

By mid-afternoon on Friday, two officials from the U.S. Consulate in Karachi had arrived at the site in Gadap, a neighborhood 18 miles from the center of this sprawling city of 14 million people. They left the site about an hour later.

Wall Street Journal spokesman Steve Goldstein declined to comment on the new discoveries. Pearl's mother, reached at her Encino, Calif., home, also declined to comment.

The body was found barely 500 yards from a large Islamic religious school, called Jamia Rashidia, that was founded by Mufti Rashid, the same man who began Al-Rashid Trust, an organization the United States has labeled as terrorist. Both the United States and Pakistan froze the group's funds after Sept. 11.

Al-Rashid Trust operated scores of bakeries in Afghanistan under the Taliban rule and built dozens of mosques there. Its leadership was very close to the Taliban rulers.

There was no immediate indication that there was any link between the school and Pearl's death.

Pearl disappeared Jan. 23 from outside a restaurant in Karachi, the Sindh provincial capital, while researching possible links between Pakistani extremists and Richard C. Reid, who was arrested in December on a flight from Paris to Miami with explosives in his shoes.

Four Islamic radicals have been on trial since April 22 on charges of murder and kidnapping in the case. They have pleaded innocent.

Friday's proceedings ended with the judge putting off a decision on a request by the chief prosecutor Raja Quereshi to send a panel to Britain to videotape the testimony of Pearl's wife, Mariane.

He is expected to make a decision on Tuesday, although the trial is scheduled to resume on Saturday.

Meanwhile, police said they believed the men who led them to the dismembered body on Thursday were among the seven other men being sought by police in connection with Pearl's disappearance and death.

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 at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

U.S. investigators traced the e-mails to one of the four men on trial, Fahad Naseem, who in turn identified 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 was called in to assist Pakistan soon after Pearl was kidnapped.

The trial of the four men is being held in the heavily fortified Hyderabad Jail, after Quereshi demanded it be moved because he feared for his life in Karachi, where the trial had opened.

The trial is closed to reporters, who have to rely on defense attorneys and prosecutors for details of the proceedings.

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