Pearl, Daniel (1963–2002)

Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was investigating terrorist groups in Pakistan when he was kidnapped and later murdered by Islamic extremists.

Pearl was born in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1963. He began his career as a journalist at a string of regional East Coast papers, joining the Journal in 1990. As a foreign correspondent for the Journal, Pearl filed many stories about the Middle East, writing about pearl divers in the Persian Gulf and describing how Osama bin Laden used the gem trade to finance his military activities. Taking on the post of Asia bureau chief for the Journal in 2000, he moved to Bombay with his wife, Mariane.

At the time of his kidnapping, Pearl was in Karachi researching the links between bin Laden's Al Qaeda network and Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber. Reid, a British-born Islamic militant, ...