Southland Service for Pearl Postponed

A community memorial for slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, originally scheduled for Saturday at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, has been postponed to give organizers more time to plan the event.

An assistant principal at Birmingham High, Pearl’s alma mater, said it will reschedule the memorial for sometime in the next few weeks.

Civic leaders and school organizations have indicated they will participate in the program, Assistant Principal Marsha Rybin said. A representative of the Pearl family also is expected to attend.

Pearl was an academic star at Birmingham High, where he was named a National Merit scholar and won a Bank of America award for excellence. He later graduated from Stanford University.

Pearl, 38, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped in the Pakistani port city of Karachi on Jan. 23 while investigating local ties between alleged “shoe bomber” Richard Reid and Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network.

Four days later, a previously unknown group that called itself the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty sent out the first of two e-mails that included photographs of Pearl in captivity. The abductors demanded the release of all Pakistani prisoners taken by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and the freeing of the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan.

On Jan. 30, after these demands were not met, the group sent photos of Pearl with a gun to his head, along with a threat to execute him within 24 hours.

When that deadline was not met, the abductors carried out their threat.

Pearl was forced to read a prepared statement denouncing the U.S. presence in Afghanistan and American support for Israel before his throat was cut and he was decapitated.

A grisly videotape showing Pearl’s execution was delivered to the U.S. Consulate in Karachi. His body has not been found.

U.S. officials have promised that the perpetrators will be tracked down and brought to justice.

A spokesman for the Wall Street Journal said a fund has been established for Pearl’s family and their charities. Donations should be sent to the Daniel Pearl Family Foundation, care of the Wall Street Journal, P.O. Box 300, Princeton, NJ 08543.