Paris grieves with murdered reporter’s French wife | Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF)

Pakistan Press Foundation

Paris grieves with murdered reporter’s French wife

PARIS- France voiced its horror at the killing of American journalist Daniel Pearl in messages of condolence on Friday to his pregnant French wife Mariane.

In a letter to her, partly written in his own hand, President Jacques Chirac called the Wall Street Journal’s South Asian bureau chief a reporter of courage and skill.

“I am horrified by this assassination at the hands of the most cruel and savage terrorism,” Chirac wrote. “Please accept …my compassion and affection in these dramatic circumstances.”

Prime Minister Lionel Jospin also sent a personal message to Mariane Pearl, who is more than six months pregnant with the couple’s first child, a son.

Daniel Pearl, 38, was kidnapped in Pakistan on January 23 while trying to contact extremist groups in Karachi. US and Pakistani officials said on Friday that his captors had slit his throat on camera. The body has not been found.

Reporters sans Frontieres (Reporters without Borders), a Paris-based international media watchdog, said Pearl’s killers and those who ordered the murder had to be brought to account.

“This barbaric crime cannot remain unpunished,” it said. “The madness that consists of making a journalist a scapegoat for the policy of his government is the greatest menace that now weighs on the freedom to report from around the world.”

It said 30 journalists had been killed in the past 12 months but urged news organisations not to stop covering danger zones.

Source: Business Recorder

Date:2/23/2002