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Pearl's widow gives birth to their son
PARIS, France (CNN) -- Mariane Pearl gave birth in Paris to a baby boy, Adam D. Pearl, who weighed in at 6.05 pounds, 19.7 inches, the family announced Thursday. Mother and child are doing well. The infant arrived Tuesday. The baby's father, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, was kidnapped January 23 by Muslim extremists in Karachi, Pakistan, while he was researching a story about Pakistani militants and suspected shoe bomber Richard Reid. Mariane Pearl, a French citizen and journalist, was pregnant at the time. She has said a pregnancy-related illness prevented her from joining her husband for the interview he was headed to the night he was kidnapped, as she usually did. A videotape of her husband's killing was sent to U.S. officials in February. A body believed to be that of Pearl's was found earlier this month. Police said the identification would be possible after DNA test results are completed. Despite her husband's violent death, Mariane said on the Daniel Pearl Foundation Web site that "Adam's birth rekindles the joy, love and humanity that Danny radiated wherever he went." Suspects go on trial
A few days after Pearl disappeared, the previously unknown National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty announced his kidnapping in e-mails to U.S. and Pakistani news organizations. Photographs of Pearl were attached. Three of the men were arrested after the FBI and police traced the e-mails to a laptop computer that belonged to one of them, Fahad Naseem. Naseem confessed and said Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh told him three days before the kidnapping that he planned to abduct someone who is "anti-Islam and a Jew." British-born Islamic militant Saeed was arrested in February in the eastern city of Lahore. The other two defendants are Naseem's cousin, Salman Saqib, and former policeman Sheikh Mohammed Adeel. Their trial began April 22 under heavy security at a jail in Hyderabad. Pakistan has not ruled out Saeed's extradition to the United States after the trial is over. A U.S. indictment charges him with conspiracy and kidnapping that resulted in Pearl's death. (Read the indictment) Saeed told Pakistani officials at his first court appearance that "as far as I know" Pearl had been killed. But the statement was not made under oath and cannot be used in his trial. A hotel clerk has identified Saeed as the man who had met with Pearl in a hotel room in Rawalpindi earlier in January. The Bush administration reportedly asked Pakistan in January to arrest Saeed in connection with the 1994 kidnapping of three British tourists and one American in India. The United States indicted Saeed last year and officials said they believe Pakistani officials attempted to find him without success. Saeed was released from an Indian prison in 1999 as part of a deal to end the hijacking of an Indian jetliner. |
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