Ben Wedeman: Many questions in Pearl search

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CNN Correspondent Ben Wedeman

(CNN) -- Authorities in Pakistan Monday delayed a court appearance for three men arrested in the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. In a report Monday from Karachi, CNN Correspondent Ben Wedeman said authorities were continuing to search for the alleged mastermind, three weeks after Pearl's disappearance.

WEDEMAN: It has been 19 days since Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl disappeared. Twelve since anything was heard from the kidnappers, and the passage of time is beginning to raise some concerns.

Pakistani police say they are engaged in a nationwide manhunt for the man they describe as the ringleader of the kidnappers ... British-educated Pakistani militant Sheikh Omar Saeed, a man with a history of involvement in kidnappings that goes back to 1994 in India. A man who also has been shown to have links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

Now, while the police say they believe Pearl is still in Karachi somewhere, they say now they believe that Sheikh Omar Saeed is in Lahore, a very large city in northeastern Pakistan. And of course that raises the question, if Saeed is the ringleader, why is he not with Pearl in Karachi? Many questions here being raised regarding this investigation.

Police are holding several of Saeed's relatives, including one uncle and two male cousins. The hope is that somehow their detention will put pressure on Saeed to release Pearl. The police also say that one of Sheikh Omar Saeed's aunts made a cell phone call to [him] earlier last week in which she urged him to give himself up to the police. The line apparently went dead.

Three men were scheduled it make a court appearance here in Karachi in connection with the kidnapping. That appearance was postponed due to procedural complications. One of these three was apparently the man who sent the e-mails to international news organizations and the photographs of Pearl coming from the kidnappers.

Later this week, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf will be going to Washington, and obviously the case of Danny Pearl will figure very highly in his meetings with U.S. officials.

The reason they ... think he [Pearl] is here [in Karachi] is because that they have put up roadblocks and various other security controls to try to make sure that if he is here, he is not going to be taken out.

But I can tell you, this is a very big city. As many as 14 million people. It's very easy to hide anyone here, and frankly ... it's not impossible that, in fact, Mr. Pearl is not in Karachi.

So, the longer this goes on, and the more we hear from one day to the next, words of optimism, then pessimism, it is beginning to become clear that maybe the Pakistani investigation isn't going as well as they are telling us.