Police say key suspect refuses to say where Wall Street Journal reporter being held

KARACHI, Pakistan — The key suspect in the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl refused to tell police where he is being held, investigators said yesterday, dampening hopes the journalist could be released soon.

Police raided several homes in and around the southern port city of Karachi yesterday, searching for collaborators and clues to the whereabouts of Pearl, who has been missing for three weeks.

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, in custody since Tuesday, has not helped locate Pearl, said Qamar Ahmed, Police Inspector of the Crime Investigation Department, which is interrogating key suspects in the case.

"He is not saying where Pearl is. He is not saying anything," Ahmed said. Still, senior Karachi police officials remain convinced Saeed is the key figure in the kidnapping and knows where the reporter is being held.

In Washington, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said he believed Pearl is still alive and suggested that the kidnapping may have been a response to his own crackdown on Islamic militants.

"I am reasonably sure he's alive and I really very much hope — we all hope — that he is alive," Musharraf said, adding that "we are as close as possible to getting him released."

Speaking to reporters alongside Musharraf, President Bush said the two leaders discussed Pearl's kidnapping in their Oval Office meeting yesterday and share a "mutual desire that Mr. Pearl return home safely."

Police said Tuesday that Saeed, a 27-year-old British-born Islamic militant who was the target of a nationwide manhunt, had been arrested, suggesting he was tracked down and taken into custody. But Ahmed said yesterday that Saeed had turned himself in to police in the eastern city of Lahore.

"We had picked up so many members of his family in different parts of the country and under pressure from his family he turned himself in," Ahmed said. Other officials also said he had surrendered.

Police hoped his surrender would help them quickly find Pearl, who disappeared Jan. 23 on his way to meet with Islamic extremist contacts. He was believed to be investigating links between Pakistani militants and Richard C. Reid, accused of trying to detonate explosives hidden in his sneakers on a Paris-to-Miami flight in December.

Four days after Pearl disappeared, an e-mail sent to Pakistani and international media showed photos of him in captivity and demanded that the United States repatriate Pakistanis captured in Afghanistan and now detained at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A second e-mail sent Jan. 30 said Pearl would be killed in 24 hours. That was the last known message from his captors.