Islamic militant tells police kidnapped reporter is dead

KARACHI, Pakistan -- A British-born militant with a history of kidnapping Westerners confessed Thursday 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 Thursday. 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 Thursday, 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.

"We have gotten as near as possible to these culprits ... We are putting all kinds of pressure to get him released," Musharraf said.

Karachi police chief Kamal Shah said investigators had no evidence Pearl was dead apart from Saeed's statement and they did not believe Saeed could be trusted.

Pearl, the Wall Street Journal's South Asia bureau chief, had been investigating links between Pakistani militant groups and Richard Reid, the man alleged to have tried to detonate explosives in his sneakers during a Paris to Miami flight in December.

Shah, the Karachi police chief, told reporters that authorities had arrested half the people involved in Pearl's kidnapping -- Saeed and three men accused of sending e-mails carrying photographs of a captured Pearl after his disappearance.

"Our top priority is to extract information, to reach out to anyone who could lead us to Daniel Pearl's whereabouts, the place where he is being kept," he said.