Police: Pearl investigation has 'slowed down'

A picture of Daniel Pearl accompanied a January 30 e-mail from his kidnappers

KARACHI, Pakistan (CNN) -- Police admitted Thursday that they had not heard from a Wall Street Journal reporter's abductors in more than a week, one day after Pakistani and U.S. authorities said they were bearing down on the kidnappers.

A Karachi police spokesman said Thursday that "the investigation has slowed down."

Investigators have had no communication from the kidnappers since January 30, when they received an e-mail accompanied by a photograph of Daniel Pearl, 38.

A police spokesman said they are following leads outside Karachi and are discounting the possibility that domestic criminal elements were involved in the kidnapping.

Pearl disappeared January 23 on his way to interview a Muslim fundamentalist regarding a story on suspected shoe bomber Richard Reid. His wife, Marianne Pearl, editors of the Wall Street Journal and several government officials and Muslim leaders have appealed for his release.

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"Obviously, this is an issue that is very troubling to all Americans and to the president," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Thursday at a news briefing. "If there is any one thing that the kidnappers need to know (it's) that they should release Mr. Pearl unconditionally and immediately."

The United States is "fully satisfied" with Pakistani authorities' efforts to find Pearl and his captors, Fleischer said. Washington would not negotiate for the reporter's release as a matter of policy, he added.

A group calling itself the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty claimed it kidnapped Pearl. The group has made several demands, including the release of Pakistanis detained during the U.S.-led war on terrorism.

Sources close to the investigation said police Tuesday evening arrested three men, at least two of them near the Karachi airport. All three -- identified only by the names Fahd, Adil and Salman -- have been linked to a computer from which e-mails, including photographs of Pearl, were sent.

A police spokesman said the FBI has been analyzing e-mails received in the case to try to determine their sources. A U.S. State Department official involved in the probe has said that some of the e-mails received since January 30 have yet to be eliminated as fakes.

According to a source, one of the men arrested confessed to receiving an e-mail from Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh -- a young Pakistani militant with a British passport -- who was freed by India in December 1999 to end the hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight.

Sheikh, often referred to as "Sheikh Omar," remains at large, along with a second, key unnamed suspect, U.S. officials said. They said they believe he is the ringleader of Pearl's kidnapping, based on information obtained from suspects questioned since last weekend.

--CNN Correspondent Ben Wedeman contributed to this report.