The life and death of Daniel Pearl

BY VERNE GAY | Newsday Staff Writer

4:32 PM EDT, October 9, 2006

Daniel Pearl would have turned 43 today, and the birthday will not pass by unnoticed. The movie of his 2002 abduction and murder, starring Angelina Jolie, starts filming in India this week, and a music festival in his memory, "Daniel Pearl World Music Days," began last week. And Tuesday night, there's a particularly fine HBO documentary on his life and death.

Who is Daniel Pearl and why all this attention? In the journalism fraternity, the question is redundant. He's not "Daniel" or "Pearl," but just "Danny," the Wall Street Journal reporter who was snatched off a street in Karachi, Pakistan, in early 2002 and later beheaded. More than 100 reporters have been killed covering the war in Iraq, but Pearl was among the first journalism casualties in the larger global war on terror. His life has since been consecrated by a book ("A Mighty Heart," by his wife, Mariane Pearl, played by Jolie in the movie) and a foundation established by his parents, Ruth and Judea. (It brings Muslim journalists to the United States and coordinates Music Days in honor of their son, who was also a gifted violinist.)

What of the other side of the ledger, so to speak? The man who planned the abduction, al-Qaida associate Omar Sheikh, was born and raised in Britain, and - as friends and acquaintances from the private school he attended explain tonight - had impeccable manners, a talent for chess and even for arm-wrestling. An FBI field officer in Pakistan offers what appears to be the most cogent assessment: He was a "psycho," she says. (He's now in a Pakistani prison, issuing regular appeals through his lawyers - all rejected - and awaiting execution.)

There's just the slightest (entirely unspoken) sense that these two might have found common ground in another time or place. But filmmakers Ahmed Jamal and Ramesh Sharma don't tarry on the what-ifs. There's far too much story to cover, and they get right down to business. There are dozens of interviews here - with friends; former colleagues from the Journal; family members; law enforcement and consulate personnel; the FBI; and even one Khalid Khawaja, a former Pakistani intelligence officer who claims to have been Pearl's primary source - that are used to meticulously piece together a narrative that began in 1999 when Pearl became the Journal's Bombay bureau chief. After 9/11, he shifted his focus to Pakistan, where he began looking for Sheik Mubarek Gilani, a mysterious figure unknown even to the U.S. Embassy and reputed to be a source of al-Qaida funding. Pearl would never reach Gilani but instead hooked up with someone claiming to be a go-between.

Omar Sheikh (he would use a pseudonym) spun an elaborate confidence game - exchanging e-mails, phone conversations, then offering to meet Pearl at a restaurant before taking him to meet Gilani. Pearl was cautious, but apparently never suspicious, even after first speaking to a U.S. consul security official, Randall Bennett, who sent up red flags.

There's much, much more. "The Journalist and the Jihadi" skillfully weaves the personal with the global: The frantic efforts of family and friends to search for Pearl (and the recollection of a bone-chilling dream by his mother, which she had at the precise moment of the kidnapping); the diplomatic implications of the crime; the complex police and FBI investigations that followed; the horrific details of his final days.

And then, it is all over. The camera pans over a gravestone in the Mount Sinai Memorial Park in Los Angeles, which is engraved with the perfect summation of a brilliant life cut tragically short: "Journalist. Musician. Humanist. He lost his life in pursuit of the truth."

THE JOURNALIST AND THE JIHADI: THE MURDER OF DANIEL PEARL. A richly detailed - and moving - story of the life and tragedy of Daniel Pearl. Christiane Amanpour narrates. Tonight at 8 on HBO.