Breakthrough Expected in Kidnap Case, Pakistan Says

Pakistan’s interior minister on Friday predicted a “major breakthrough” and more arrests within 48 hours in the search for Daniel Pearl. The official rejected a claim from Pearl’s self-confessed kidnapper that the Wall Street Journal reporter is dead.

Police said they were focusing their search on two suspected Islamic militants: Mohammed Hashim Qadeer and Imtiaz Siddiqi, both of whom were believed to have met Pearl last month while he was researching a story on extremist groups.

Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider said there was “no evidence” that Pearl had been killed, despite the claims by suspect Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh in court Thursday.

Sheikh, a British-born Islamic militant with a history of kidnapping Westerners, “has been changing his statements,” Haider told reporters in the eastern city of Lahore.

But a Pakistani newspaper quoted an unidentified “ranking official” as saying Sheikh received confirmation of Pearl’s death Feb. 5--the day Sheikh says he turned himself in to authorities.

The newspaper, called the News, said that Sheikh had heard “from one of his sources” that the 38-year-old Pearl was shot around Jan. 31 while trying to escape. Pearl disappeared Jan. 23 while on his way to meet Islamic militants at a restaurant in Karachi, a southern port city.

Steve Goldstein, a spokesman for Dow Jones & Co., the Journal’s parent organization, said Friday that the company is still hopeful.