The four men imprisoned for the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl were not present at his beheading, according to a new report from the Pearl Project.
The report, the result of an investigation carried out by a team of US journalists and students and spanning more than three years, also accuses Pakistani authorities of knowingly relying on false evidence and ignoring important leads during the prosecution. It claims that US forensic evidence known as “vein-matching” points to al-Qaida commander Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who confessed to having killed Pearl after being arrested in connection with the World Trade Centre attacks.
Pearl was abducted in January 2002 while researching a story on Islamist militancy. In February a video of his execution was delivered to US officials in Pakistan.