Pakistani police said today they believed kidnapped US reporter Mr Daniel Pearl was still alive, but played down talk they were close to finding his abductors.
Wall Street Journal
reporter Mr Pearl (38) disappeared in the southern city of Karachi on January 23rd as he tried to contact radical Islamic groups, and trace links between Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and alleged shoe-bomber Mr Richard Reid.
In the week following his disappearance, police received two emails from the previously unknown National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, threatening to kill Mr Pearl if the United States did not release its prisoners from the Afghan war.
Both emails contained photographs of Mr Pearl in captivity. He is being kept in what the kidnappers describe as inhumane conditions to protest the treatment of the US prisoners in Cuba.
Police said they had made another arrest in the capital Islamabad today in the hunt for Mr Pearl's kidnappers, but said the investigations could easily drag on.
Despite not having heard anything from Mr Pearl's abductors for more than a week, police said they were hopeful the he was still alive somewhere in Pakistan. They believe the kidnappers had gone silent because they knew the net was closing in.
Yesterday police named British-born Islamic militant Mr Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, better known as Sheikh Omar, as one of their principal suspects in the case and raided his house in eastern city of Lahore.
They also raided his aunt's house and detained some of his relatives for several hours.