A US television company has broadcast a video tape showing scenes directly preceding the execution of Daniel Pearl, the American journalist who was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan earlier this year.
The tape, shown by CBS News late on Tuesday, begins with Pearl giving his captors a brief description of his roots.
”My father’s Jewish. My mother’s Jewish. I’m Jewish,” he says.
He goes on to recite an anti-American statement apparently prepared for him by his captors.
”We Americans cannot continue to bear the consequences of our government actions such as the unconditional support given to the state of Israel,” the reporter says.
The whole scene is interspersed with news clips of Israel’s military operations against the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
According to the network, the tape, which was clearly manufactured for propaganda purposes, ends with Pearl’s beheading, but his actual execution was not broadcast.
”It was only after great deliberation that CBS News chose to broadcast portions of this video,” managing editor and anchor Dan Rather said in a statement.
”We believe it is important for Americans to see it and understand the full impact and danger of the propaganda war being waged against the United States and its allies, and also its effect on the young people of the Arab world,” Rather added.
The tape titled, ”The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl,” first surfaced on a Saudi Web site and then began spreading over the Internet, according to the report.
”The audience for this website are young Saudis, college students, high school students and unemployed Saudis,” Ali al-Ahmed, a dissident Saudi Arabian journalist said in the network’s news segment.
According to CBS the purpose of its distribution was apparently to recruit new members for radical Islamic organisations.
Pearl, who worked for The Wall Street Journal, was abducted in the Pakistani city of Karachi on January 23 while trying to arrange an interview with a militant Islamic leader in Pakistan.
His body has never been found, but the US Federal Bureau of Investigation has determined that the tape showing his execution is authentic.
The prime suspect, Sheikh Omar, is now on trial in the Pakistani city of Hyderabad.
A number of US television companies, including CNN, have said in recent weeks they have copies of the tape, but have not dared broadcast even a portion of it citing its graphic content. – Sapa-AFP