Police Optimistic Reporter Is Alive

Police investigating the kidnapping of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl voiced growing optimism Tuesday that the Wall Street Journal reporter is still alive and that they are nearing a major break in the case.

Still, authorities in the port city of Karachi, where Pearl disappeared Jan. 23, declined to comment in any detail on the reason for their new confidence.

“There’s been no breakthrough yet, but we’re moving in the right direction,” said Tariq Jamil, deputy inspector general of police for Karachi.

In a telephone interview, Jamil said “new suspects” were detained Tuesday in connection with the case, but he indicated that they aren’t believed to be central players in the abduction.

A senior police officer who declined to be identified described the newly detained suspects as two men, both believed to be members of the Islamic militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed. The group is one of five extremist organizations banned last month by Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, as part of a nationwide crackdown.

Jaish-e-Mohammed has been linked with terrorist activities related to the Kashmir dispute between Pakistan and India, including a Dec. 13 attack on the Indian Parliament and a December 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar, Afghanistan. The hijackers won the release of three of the group’s leaders, including a man named Sheik Ahmad Omar Sayed.

The senior police officer said investigators believe that Jaish-e-Mohammed as a group, or some senior figures within it, including Sayed, may be linked to the kidnapping.

Authorities are concentrating on three figures in the kidnapping case, at least two of whom may have been intermediaries for Pearl in arranging an interview with Sheik Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani, head of another fundamentalist Islamic group, Jamaat ul-Fuqra.

Pearl believed he had uncovered a link between Gilani and Richard C. Reid, who is accused of trying to blow up a Miami-bound aircraft by detonating explosives in his shoes.

Pearl was known to be seeking an interview with Gilani at the time of his disappearance.

Police investigators said Tuesday that they had traced the Inter net service provider used by the kidnappers to send their e-mail list of political demands and threats to kill Pearl if those demands were not met. Police are searching for the terminals that actually transmitted the two e-mails.

A few days ago, investigators dismissed as hoaxes a flurry of other e-mails, including one declaring that Pearl had been killed.