Farah Stockman of The New York Times writes about the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl, which occurred 19 years ago.
Stockman writes, “But I can’t forget. Daniel Pearl and I were both trying to interview the same reclusive spiritual leader in Pakistan when he was kidnapped and killed. ‘Don’t worry,’ a spokesman for the spiritual leader assured me. ‘If anyone gets an interview, it will be you.’ But Mr. Pearl, a more seasoned journalist who served as The Journal’s South Asia bureau chief at the time, found someone who promised to arrange the coveted interview. He jumped into a taxi and disappeared.
“Weeks later, Mr. Pearl’s beheading shocked the world. That was the moment I realized that this thing we do called journalism contained dangers I hadn’t contemplated before. It was a fitting lesson for the era of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which opened the country’s eyes to how easily it could become a victim. And so it was upsetting to read recently that a Pakistani court ordered the release of Omar Sheikh, the British-born militant who orchestrated the kidnapping of Mr. Pearl. Mr. Sheikh had been sentenced to death in 2002, but the execution never happened. Last year, a Pakistani court downgraded his conviction to a simple abduction — punishable by seven years in prison, which he had already served.
“The court rulings open old wounds and illuminate a central question at the heart of the war on terror that remains unresolved: Are there some crimes so terrible that we must never let the perpetrators walk free, even if a judge orders it?”
Read more here.
