Story behind Pearl death still a mystery

A high-profile new film has focused renewed attention on the case of the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and executed by Islamic insurgents here in 2002, and has underscored the fact that many questions remain unanswered.

Investigators in this teeming port city, a longtime hub for Islamic extremists, acknowledge that not all those responsible for Pearl's killing have been brought to justice. And many analysts believe that though the case remains open, the full story behind the kidnapping plot probably will never be known.

"We're never going to get the whole picture," said Christine Fair, a senior research associate in South Asia and terrorism at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington. "It's like a quilt -- it leads you to another patch, and another."

The most persistently nebulous element of the case, analysts say, is how much Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency knew about the events surrounding Pearl's capture and execution. Pakistani military intelligence has a history of entanglement with the Islamic militants it is charged with policing.

"There are officials within the security services who are not entirely interested in seeing this [investigation] go forward," said John Harrison, a senior researcher for the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore. "Not that they were involved in the murder itself, but there are definitely embarrassing connections between the ISI and many of the perpetrators."

These dark and various complexities underpin the film "A Mighty Heart," starring Angelina Jolie and produced by Brad Pitt, which opens in U.S. theaters Friday. Karachi is the real-life backdrop of the events depicted in the movie -- which is based on a book by Pearl's widow, Mariane -- though much of the filming was done in India.

The narrative traces the harrowing days and nights that followed the journalist's disappearance, the desperate hunt for clues and the shattering denouement: Mariane Pearl, then six months pregnant, learning that her husband had been beheaded by his captors.

'So much that is hidden'

Five years on, the web that ensnared the 38-year-old reporter has tendrils everywhere in Karachi, whose 15-million-plus population makes it one of the world's megacities, a dizzying mix of festering slum and chic high life.