Daniel Pearl, American journalist and South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal, kidnapped January 23, 2002, is beheaded and mutilated by his captors.
Daniel Pearl (October 10, 1963 – February 1, 2002) was an American journalist who worked for The Wall Street Journal. He was kidnapped and later decapitated by terrorists in Pakistan.
Pearl was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and raised in Encino, Los Angeles, to a Jewish family of mixed European and West Asian origins; his father is of Polish Jewish descent and his mother was an Iraqi Jew from Baghdad. After attending Stanford University, Pearl embarked on a career in journalism. He was working as the South Asia Bureau Chief of The Wall Street Journal, based in Mumbai, India. Infamously, he was kidnapped when he went to Pakistan as part of an investigation into the alleged links between British citizen Richard Reid (known as the "shoe bomber") and al-Qaeda. Pearl was killed by his captors.Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British national of Pakistani origin, was sentenced to death by hanging for Pearl's abduction and murder in 2002, but his conviction was overturned by a Pakistani court in the summer of 2020. Researchers have also connected Al-Qaeda member Saif al-Adel with the kidnapping.