Militant confesses to kidnapping journalist

KARACHI, Pakistan — A British-born militant with a history of kidnapping Westerners confessed yesterday to the abduction of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and, in a chilling declaration, told a Pakistani court he believes the journalist is dead.

But President Pervez Musharraf and Karachi police questioned his claim, and the Journal said it is confident Pearl is still alive.

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh appeared in court for the first time yesterday. He gave no details on where or when the 38-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter was allegedly killed. Just a day earlier, police said he had told them Pearl was still alive.

With his hands bound in thick steel chains and a dirty shawl draped over his head, Saeed shuffled into an anti-terrorist court surrounded by police in bulletproof vests gripping automatic rifles.

Twice Saeed struggled to remove the shawl from his head and twice police put it back on. Finally Judge Ershad Noor Khan agreed to have it removed.

“I don’t want to defend this case. I did this,” Saeed said in a soft voice, barely a whisper at times. “As far as I understand, he’s dead.”

Grim-faced and looking weary, Saeed told the court, “Right or wrong, I had my reasons. I think that our country shouldn’t be catering to America’s needs.”

Saeed’s unexpected statement came a day after Musharraf met President Bush in Washington to receive applause for Pakistan’s support in the war against terror. Musharraf abandoned his longtime Taliban allies after the Sept. 11 attacks and has moved to crack down on Muslim extremists who had long been tolerated and even supported by previous governments here.

After meeting with lawmakers yesterday, Musharraf said his government does not believe Saeed’s claims about Pearl’s death because the suspect’s been “saying something one day and another thing on the other day.”

“I think he is possibly alive,” Musharraf said, explaining that if Pearl were dead Pakistani officials would have likely found his body by now because of the pressure being put on the kidnappers.