Pakistan holds 3 in reporter kidnapping

KARACHI, Pakistan (CNN) -- Three men detained this week in connection with the disappearance of Daniel Pearl have been formally arrested in connection with the Wall Street Journal reporter's kidnapping, officials in Pakistan said Friday.

Pakistani officials say the men, identified only by the names Fahd, Adil and Salman, are suspected of having links to a computer from which e-mails, including photographs of Pearl, were sent.

Formal charges can only be levied by a judge, and that has not taken place. The formal arrest gives Pakistani officials legal justification to hold them.

Pearl disappeared January 23, believing he was on his way to an interview with a Muslim religious leader whom he thought had ties to Richard Reid, the man accused of trying to bomb an airliner with explosives hidden in his shoes. Pearl was working on a story about Reid.

VIDEO CNN's Ben Wedeman says Pakistani police claim to have found the source of e-mails and photos of kidnapped journalist Daniel Pearl (February 8) Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

Investigators, who said they still believe Pearl is in the Karachi area, have received no confirmed communication from the kidnappers since January 30, when they were sent an e-mail accompanied by photographs of the 38-year-old journalist, police said. It was the second such e-mail, and it demanded that the United States free Pakistanis held at Guantanamo Bay in return for Pearl's release.

Pakistani police found the computer from which photographs of Pearl were e-mailed in an apartment in a working-class neighborhood of Karachi. The computer belonged to the man identified as Fahd, who told police he had been given the text of the e-mails he sent and the photographs by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a young Pakistani militant with a British passport.

Sheikh -- often referred to as "Sheikh Omar" -- who was jailed by India in 1994 for involvement in the kidnapping of British and American tourists. But he was freed on December 31, 1999, to end the hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight.

CNN has obtained copies of e-mails reportedly exchanged between Pearl and Chaudery Bashir Ahmed Shabbir -- said by sources close to the investigation to be a pseudonym for Sheikh. The e-mails indicate that the kidnappers lured Pearl into a trap with vague promises of an interview with Sheikh Mubarik ali Gilani, the head of the fundamentalist Islamic Jamaat ul-Fuqra group.

Intelligence sources have linked Sheikh to Osama Bin Ladin's al-Qaeda network, and say he sent $100,000 to suspected September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. The sources also say he sent money to a second man believed to be one of the hijackers, Marwan al Shehhi.

Sources say that Pakistani police have taken several of Sheikh's relatives into custody, essentially as human bargaining chips.

-- CNN Correspondent Ben Wedeman contributed to this report.