The Pearl Project

       Daniel Pearl was a brave American Journalist who served as the South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal. He set out on his mission to Pakistan on January 3, 2002 as part of an investigation linking Richard Reid and Al-Qaeda. He was later kidnapped and beheaded by his captors. Daniel believed that he was going to interviews but instead he was being set up and shortly was directed to his own death. Osra, Daniel's partner at the time, who after his death wanted to finish the investigation on the beheading of her beloved friend. Osra started her research back up in the Spring of 2007. They had hardly any money and the investigation took them three years to complete.

Daniel Pearl was just like any other American Journalist, curious and fearless. He felt that his job was to be an ambassador to all the complicated issues in the world. Mohammad Hashim Qadir bated Danny saying that he had connections to the information that Daniel needed for his story and then sent him to 7 other men who ended up be a trap. This project was so important and effected many people. A sense of closure put the team of journalist to peace although Danny was brutally murdered. After the investigation was complete four men were convicted, five are dead, four are still detained or missing and 14 are still free making this a total of 27 men playing some kind of role in the events surrounding the kidnapping and murder.

Most journalist today have to take extreme precautions when traveling abroad to retrieve news. Unfortunately this is our normal now as journalists. Normal in the early 21st century was being able to freely travel and  not worry about your safety and whether or not you were going to be bait for a murder, but of course those are always thoughts to keep in the back of your mind. To many Americans surprise, this occurred significantly close to the terrorist attack of 9/11. As journalists should we attempt to report on such a touchy subject during a time of crisis? Could they and do they have reasonable doubt to think that we are not American spies trying to figure out their reasonings behind things? My answer to this is we should probably not report on such issues during time of war and yes they have every reason to believe that we are spies trying to find our main suspect in such a case.

While Daniel showed amazing heroism throughout his journey in Pakistan, so did Osra and her group of young journalist that risked their lives trying to find answers. Although they never traveled to Pakistan to personally find answers, they did much research, made numerous phone calls across the world and even bravely showed up at houses of potential information givers. A total of 32 students spent countless hours and sleepless nights on finding the reasons behind his death and who were involved. The amount of time spent getting past the language and cultural barrier alone cost the young investigators an extreme amount of time. "I remember taking the first five minutes of the phone conversation just saying, "Hello, hello, hello can you hear me?" and once we got past the echoing and outside noises I then had to worry about whether or not they could understand me or if there was some way I could get enough out of the conversation to lead me to the next person" Jess said.

The group plans to travel and tell Daniel's story. They are relieved that they are finished with the investigation but not necessarily thrilled about guilty men still being on the loose. What these students and Osra have done is opened up many opportunities for future journalist to follow their dreams and to never give up on something they believe so strongly about. Their hope is to tell The Pearl Project and gain peace for the loss of the American Journalist, Daniel Pearl. You can read more information on their online book at http://treesaver.publicintegrity.org/node/63.