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ISLAMABAD - The Wall Street Journal says it believes its reporter Daniel Pearl, thought to have been kidnapped by Muslim militants in Pakistan, is still alive and has not been executed by his captors.
The fate of Pearl, 38, who went missing in the southern city of Karachi on January 23, was thrown into question late yesterday when one message purported to be from his kidnappers said he had been killed, but another demanded the release of a top Taleban prisoner held captive by the United States and $2 million.
A US official said no conclusion had been reached on the authenticity of the messages, but Pearl's newspaper said it thought both were fake and he was still alive.
"Based on reports from Pakistan we now believe that both of the messages received yesterday about Danny were false. We continue to believe that Danny is alive," the newspaper said in a statement by managing editor Paul Steiger.
"We urge them to release Danny. If that is not possible, we call on them to demonstrate that Danny remains alive. They can do this by providing us with a photo of Danny holding today's newspaper," Steiger said.
A group claiming to hold Pearl has sent a number of e-mails threatening to kill him and demanding the release of Pakistani prisoners captured by US forces in the Afghan war.
Washington has ruled out meeting the demands.
Steiger said he wanted a dialogue with the kidnappers, either through public or private channels.
Pearl, who is based in the Indian city of Bombay for the WSJ, disappeared while working on a story about alleged shoe-bomber Richard Reid and trying to contact radical Islamic groups.
A police official in Karachi said two people had been detained after an e-mail was sent late on Friday saying Pearl had been killed and his body dumped in a city cemetery. Police scoured graveyards through the night but found nothing.
"We detained two persons during a raid at a house and also seized a computer...and are interrogating those people," the official said. He declined to elaborate.
Brigadier Mukhtar Ahmed, interior secretary in Sindh province of which Karachi is the capital, told Reuters the investigation was "inching forward."
"We are taking every thing seriously, e-mail and death threats, we don't know what going to happen next," he said.
Top Pakistani and US security officials handling the investigation huddled in a meeting in the capital Islamabad on Saturday, while Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider traveled south to Karachi.
"The investigations are going on...there are several leads," Foreign Ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan told a news briefing in Islamabad.
"It is unfortunate it has happened but the government of Pakistan is vigilant, it's doing its best for the recovery of the American journalist," he said.
A previously unknown group, The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, says it holds Pearl. It threatened to kill him at the expiry of a 24-hour ultimatum first set late on Wednesday.
Those e-mails included photographs of Pearl, one with a gun pointed at his head, and a warning to US journalists in Pakistan to leave within three days or risk being targeted.
US officials said they had yet to decide on the authenticity of the e-mail saying Pearl was dead, which unlike earlier messages did not contain photographs of the captive.
The United States is holding 158 prisoners from the Afghan war at a base on Cuba and another 324 are being held by US forces in Afghanistan.
- REUTERS
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