Reporter dead

NEW YORK -- Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was taken hostage by Islamic extremists in Pakistan, is now believed to be dead, the newspaper said Thursday. \n"We now believe, based on reports from the U.S. State Department and police officials of the Pakistani province of Sind, that Danny Pearl was killed by his captors. We are heartbroken at his death," Peter Kann, publisher of the Journal, said in a statement. \n"Danny was an outstanding colleague, a great reporter and a dear friend of many at the Journal," Kann said. "His murder is an act of barbarism that makes a mockery of everything Danny's kidnappers claimed to believe in. They claimed to be Pakistani nationalists, but their actions must surely bring shame to all true Pakistani patriots." \nPearl was abducted in the port city of Karachi Jan. 23 after arranging to interview the leader of a radical Muslim faction with purported ties to the al Qaeda terrorist network and terror suspect Richard C. Reid, arrested in December on a Paris-Miami flight he allegedly boarded with explosives in his shoes. \nThe statement, signed by Kann and Journal Managing Editor Paul Steiger, said, "We will, in coming months, find ways, public and private, to celebrate the great work and good works Danny did. But today is a day to grieve. \n"This loss is, of course, most painful for Danny's family, in this country and elsewhere. We ask our colleagues in the press to respect their privacy and to permit them to grieve undisturbed." \nPearl reported from the United States, Europe and Asia in a 12-year career with the financial daily. Based in Bombay, India, for the past year as the Journal's bureau chief for South Asia, the 38-year-old Pearl was on assignment in Pakistan as part of its coverage of the war on terrorism in neighboring Afghanistan. \nThe Princeton, N.J., native had worked for newspapers in western Massachusetts and briefly in San Francisco before joining the Journal in Atlanta in 1990. He later reported from Washington, London and Paris -- where he wrote about the Middle East -- before moving to Asia. \n"The Wall Street Journal is a public institution, but the Pearls are private citizens," the Journal statement said. "We hope also that our colleagues, too, will be permitted some time and space to begin the very difficult process of making peace with this profound loss."\nIn an intensive sweep, Pakistani police seized several suspects, including Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, an Islamic militant. \nAccording to Pakistani authorities, Sheikh, a British-born key figure in an airplane hijacking and hostage incident in 1999, first told them Pearl was alive but later claimed the reporter had been killed in an escape attempt around Jan. 31.