March 14, 2007
Pearls respond to murder ‘confession:’ We’ll continue to fight hatred
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The Pearls recorded this video to mark the fifth anniversary of Danny's death.
Click on the BIG ARROW to view.
Judea and Ruth Pearl were notified late Wednesday evening that the suspected mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, has confessed to personally killing their son, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
"I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan," Mohammed is quoted as saying, the Associated Press reported.
The Pearls spent the night talking about their son, who was abducted in Pakistan in January 2002, Ruth Pearl said in a brief phone conversation Thursday morning.
In a statement released to The Jewish Journal on Thursday, the Pearls said, "It is impossible to know at this point whether Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's boast about killing our son has any bearing in truth. We prefer to focus our energy on continuing Danny's lifework through the programs of the Daniel Pearl Foundation which aim to eradicate the hatred that took his life."
Judea Pearl is a retired UCLA professor of computer science and his wife is an electrical engineer.
Mohammed's written confession was read to a military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on March 10, and released by the Pentagon in a 26-page transcript on March 14.
Mohammed also claimed responsibility for the Sept. 11 operation "from A to Z" and for 30 other attacks and plots in the United States and other countries. Among them was the 2002 bombing of a Kenya beach resort frequented by Israelis and the failed missile attack on an Israeli passenger jet after it took off from Mombasa in Kenya.
The hearing was closed to the press and outside observers, a procedure protested by AP, while Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch questioned whether the confession might have been extracted through torture.
