Ben Wedeman: Hoaxes slowing kidnap investigation

CNN's Ben Wedeman

KARACHI, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistani police had two men in custody Sunday -- and detained and released a third man -- in connection with false claims about the whereabouts of kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

In a report Sunday from Karachi, CNN correspondent Ben Wedeman said that bogus e-mails and phone calls are hampering authorities as they try to determine whether Pearl, 38, is still alive.

WEDEMAN: "Inching forward" is how one Pakistani official describes the progress in this case, and certainly that appears to be a very apt description. The home secretary of Pakistan tells CNN that he believes that Mr. Pearl is somewhere in the Karachi area, and Pakistani authorities do believe he is still alive. However, they are searching adjacent provinces, looking basically under every rock to try to find out where he could be.

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One of the persistent problems in this case has been the problem of hoax e-mails and hoax calls demanding ransom or claiming that Mr. Pearl, for instance, is dead. One of those claims regarding his execution sparked off a frantic search of the more than 200 cemeteries in Karachi. Fortunately, that search was fruitless.

At the same time, there has been a variety of appeals going out to the kidnappers. One of them in the local newspaper here [was from] the wife of Mr. Pearl, Marianne Pearl -- she's a six-month pregnant, free-lance French journalist -- she called upon the kidnappers to release her husband. Other appeals have come from personalities such as Yusuf Islam, also known as Cat Stevens. But until now, however, those appeals have been fruitless.

One of the problems also facing investigators is the fact that two very key individuals -- suspects, we can call them -- are missing. These two individuals were basically serving as go-betweens between Mr. Pearl and the leader of a hard-line Islamic group, who is also in detention at the moment. It was on his way to meet that leader that Mr. Pearl was kidnapped.