Search for U.S. Reporter Focuses on New Suspect

KARACHI, Pakistan â€”  After aiming for the top and failing, investigators searching for kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl have turned their attention away from the confessed mastermind of the abduction to a lower-level militant who allegedly sent Pearl off to the fake meeting that led to his disappearance.

But investigators who just days ago promised rapid developments in the case were not even in accord Saturday about the latest suspect’s name--though they agreed that he was not at home when they raided his family’s house.

The new suspect probably is named Amjad Hussain Farooqi, but he has also been identified as Mansour Hussain and Haider Ali Farooqi, according to several police sources.

What investigators could agree on was that their latest quarry identified himself to Pearl as Imtiaz Siddiqi.

The man known as Siddiqi, they say, telephoned the correspondent within an hour before his disappearance Jan. 23 and sent him off to a tryst at a neighborhood restaurant in this port city with the promise that he would get a long-sought interview with a radical Islamic cleric.

Instead, the 38-year-old South Asia bureau chief for the Journal went missing, and since two e-mail messages from his kidnappers were sent out three weeks ago, no one has come forward with information about his fate.

Investigators continued Saturday to interrogate Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, the apparent ringleader of the kidnapping plot, in whom they had placed high hopes of ending the case after his arrest was announced Tuesday. It was still uncertain Saturday whether he actually was arrested last week or had been in custody earlier. He said in court that he was in custody by Feb. 5, which was confirmed by a top government source but denied by local investigators.

Sheikh has offered no concrete leads. He shocked authorities Thursday by tearing off a hood placed over his head and blurting to a judge that “as far as I understand, he [Pearl] is dead.� He also confessed to the kidnapping in open court and said he did not want to defend himself against any charges.

Investigators said that Sheikh was lying and that, until convinced otherwise, they were operating under the assumption that Pearl was alive. The reporter’s wife, Mariane, who is six months pregnant with the couple’s first child, also was holding on to that belief.

Some investigation sources say the new focus of the hunt--Farooqi--may have been one of the hijackers of an Indian Airlines jet who demanded and won Sheikh’s release from an Indian prison in 1999. But a police source dismissed that theory Saturday.

Meanwhile, police continued to search for a third man behind e-mails sent to Pearl as part of an elaborate setup to kidnap him. That man, who identified himself as “Arif,� is believed to be Mohammed Hashim Qadeer. When investigators showed up at his family’s house two weeks ago, relatives were sitting in mourning for Qadeer--with no body. They told police that he had died only days earlier in Afghanistan, but investigators were skeptical and have continued their hunt for him.

As recently as Thursday, investigators promised an impending break in the case. On Saturday, they appeared to be backing away from that promise.