Worldwide revulsion at murder of American journalist on video

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World leaders, governments and journalists expressed shock, grief and revulsion yesterday as it emerged that Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter missing in Pakistan for one month, had been murdered on camera.

The Islamic terrorists who took him prisoner set their video camera running, then Mr Pearl spoke into the camera the words "I am a Jew, my mother is a Jew," then they slit his throat. He was later decapitated.

The brief, harrowing video was delivered to the US Consulate in Karachi by a Pakistani journalist acting as a go- between and was later seen by Pakistani government officials and senior editors at the Wall Street Journal. They confirmed the contents. In Islamabad, President Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military ruler, clearly shaken at the brutal end to a case on which he had staked his prestige, expressed "profound grief" over the killing and ordered the security forces "to apprehend each and every member of the gang of terrorists involved in this gruesome murder."

Later, on state television, after a telephone conversation with President Bush in which the American president called the killing "barbaric", he stiffened his language, pledging to "liquidate" terrorist groups from the country.

The European Union condemned the killing as a "barbaric murder," and journalists' groups voiced horror at the brutal murder of a reporter carrying out his professional duties.

Mr Pearl was the ninth foreign journalist to be murdered in the region since last September, but the first American, and the first to die in Pakistan. More foreign journalists have died in the war than American combat troops. A group calling itself the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, claimed responsibility for Mr Pearl's kidnapping, accusing him of being a spy - first for the CIA, then for Israeli intelligence.

It said it was protesting against US treatment of Taliban and al-Qa'ida prisoners from the Afghan war. A British Islamic militant linked to al-Qa'ida now under arrest in Pakistan, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, confessed to the kidnap after his arrest last week.

Mr Pearl was South Asia correspondent he was working in Karachi accompanied by his pregnant wife Mariane when he was abducted on January 23.

At the main office of the Journal in New York, editor Connie Ford said: "Work stopped for a while. There was surprise and sadness. I will remember him as a great guy and a wonderful reporter."