Four weeks after US journalist Daniel Pearl disappeared in Karachi, investigators insisted on Wednesday they are on the trail of a gang that abducted him but there was still no indication of whether he is alive or dead.

"We have identified the gang and we are looking for them," the home secretary of Sindh province, Mukhtar Sheikh, said.

"Such cases take time. We're definitely on it and have already arrested the prime suspect and identified his accomplices."
The prime suspect is Sheikh Omar, a British-born militant who already spent six years prison in India on allegations of kidnapping foreigners. Omar, 29, last week confessed to masterminding the abduction, claimed in court that Pearl had been killed, and fed interrogators the names of some of his partners in an apparent gang of kidnappers, which investigators believe could number around 10 people.
But a series of raids on other suspected kidnappers has only resulted in the arrests of their relatives. The last sign of Pearl, a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, was on January 30, when the second of two e-mails containing photos of him in captivity were sent to news organisations, accompanied by death threats.


Bureau Report