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Daniel Pearl
Journalist for the Wall Street Journal, killed in Pakistan by Muslim extremists. As a Jew, perhaps it was not the wisest move to allow himself to be taken voluntarily into the custody of such people.
Pearl's captors made a video, titled The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl. The video made its way to the Pakistani government and the U.S. government, and eventually it leaked onto the Internet through a Jihadist site. It consists of a Pearl monologue describing his Jewish upbringing, his family's involvement with the creation of the Israeli state, and his feelings regarding the current controversy. His monologue is presented in edited sound bites; at times he appears relaxed and his speech is natural, but during other parts he is tense and his speech sounds forced. Most of what he says is not terribly controversial, and notably he does not claim to be a spy for the U.S. or Israel. According to published reports, when Daniel Pearl's throat was first slashed, a technical error caused it not to be captured on film. In the video Pearl's corpse is shown naked from the waist up, laying on a blanket; a man's arm is holding his head forward so that his cut neck cannot be seen. With the knife in his other hand, the man proceeds to cut deeper into Pearl's neck, from the back to the front. There is little blood. The man holding the knife is now strongly believed to have been Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, then the chief of military operations for al Qaeda. The remaining 90 seconds of the video consist of a list of demands scrolling by, superimposed over a picture of Pearl's severed head being held by the hair. Among the list is a demand for delivery of American F-16's paid for but never received by the Pakistani government. Transcript of the English text on the video:
NATIONAL MOVEMENT FOR THE RESTORATION OF PAKISTAN SOVEREIGNTY (NMRPS)Three suspects were caught after the Federal Bureau of Investigation traced emails announcing the kidnapping back to the laptop which sent them. The suspects were members of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Pakistani terrorist group with ties to al Qaeda, whose membership is closely linked to both Khalid Shaikh and his nephew, Ramzi Yousef. The group is also linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist operating in Iraq who has since made the videotaped beheading his personal trademark. The Pearl killing was notable for kicking off an industry boom in terrorist snuff films that continues to this day. Timeline
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