Officials confirm death of Pearl, son of UCLA professor
By Daily Bruin Staff
Feb. 21, 2002 9:00 p.m.
 The Associated Press Wall Street Journal reporter
Daniel Pearl was confirmed dead Thursday by the
State Department after new video evidence surfaced one month after
his kidnapping in Karachi, Pakistan.
By Michael Falcone
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
For nearly a month, Daniel Pearl’s father, UCLA professor
Judea Pearl, waited for news about the fate of his son. Thursday,
he learned that the worst was true.
At his home in Encino, Professor Pearl, a faculty member in the
Department of Computer Science since 1970 when Daniel was just
seven years old, received word from the U.S. Department of State
that videotape evidence confirmed his son had been killed.
“Danny’s senseless murder lies beyond our
comprehension,” said a spokesman reading a statement on
behalf of Daniel’s parents and sisters. “Danny was a
beloved son, a brother, an uncle, a husband and a father to a child
who will never know him.”
A reporter for the Wall Street Journal, Daniel was kidnapped
Jan. 23 in Karachi, Pakistan. That night he was on his way to
interview the leader of an extremist Muslim group with possible
ties to alleged shoe bomber Richard C. Reid. The 38-year-old
journalist never returned.
Pakistani authorities said a videotape they obtained showed
Daniel being killed by the Islamic extremists who kidnapped him a
month ago. The U.S. State Department did not say when Pearl was
killed.
“The murder of Mr. Pearl is an outrage, and we condemn
it,” said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
“Both the United States and Pakistan are committed to
identifying all the perpetrators of this crime and bringing them to
justice.”
 Stanford University Daniel Pearl is
shown here in a 1985 yearbook photo from Stanford University.
Traveling in Asia, President George W. Bush extended his
condolences to Daniel’s pregnant wife, Marianne, and family,
saying all Americans are “sad and angry” about the
journalist’s death.
“We are especially sad for his unborn child, who will now
know his father only through the memory of others,” Bush
said. “May God bless Daniel Pearl.”
In Pakistan, where police already have several suspects in
custody ““ including Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who admitted to
involvement in the kidnapping ““ the country’s
president, Pervez Musharraf, instructed security forces to
apprehend “each and every one of the gang of
terrorists” connected with Pearl’s killing.
For more than four weeks, Pearl’s status was unknown. Days
after Pearl’s disappearance, several media outlets including
the Wall Street Journal received an e-mail with photos of Daniel in
captivity and a demand to release Pakistanis held at the U.S. naval
base in Gauantanamo Bay, Cuba. The last of the e-mail messages,
sent Jan. 30, said Pearl would be killed in 24 hours.
A week ago in a Karachi courtroom, Saeed indicated Pearl was
dead, contradicting statements he made a day before that the
journalist was still alive.
Reports that Pearl was led into a trap adds to speculation about
the motivations of his abductors. Another man being held in
connection with the kidnapping said Pearl was abducted because he
was “a Jew working against Islam,” according to a story
in a major Southeast Asian newspaper, The Times of India.
Pearl was accused by his captors of being an agent of the
Israeli intelligence group, the Moussad. Before that, they claimed
he was an undercover CIA officer.
Out of a concern for the safety of Daniel, The Daily Bruin
joined other media organizations in not printing information about
the Pearl family until now.
Both Judea and his wife, Ruth, have Israeli citizenship.
Professor Pearl, a widely-published expert in the field of
artificial intelligence, has been the director of the Cognitive
Systems Laboratory at UCLA. He is not teaching any classes this
quarter.
Professor Pearl received his undergraduate degree from the
Technion in Haifa, Israel, and before joining the university, he
worked in Princeton, New Jersey ““ the town where Daniel was
born in 1963.
After the family’s move to Southern California, Daniel
graduated from Birmingham High School in Van Nuys and attended
Stanford University, where he received a communications degree in
1985. Pearl went on to work at papers in San Francisco and
Massachusetts before joining the Wall Street Journal.
Breaking their silence after a month-long period of uncertainty,
Daniel’s family in Los Angeles now begins what will be an
even longer period of mourning.
“A musician, a writer, a story-teller and a bridge
builder, he was a walking sunshine of truth, humor, friendship and
compassion,” their statement said. “We grieve with the
many who have known him in his life, and we weep for a world that
must reckon with his death.”
With reports from Daily Bruin wire services.
