Associated Press
Thursday, July 19, 2007

NEW YORK, July 18 -- The widow of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl has sued more than a dozen alleged terrorists and Pakistan's largest bank, blaming them for Pearl's torture and murder in 2002.

A complaint filed Wednesday in Brooklyn federal court by Mariane Pearl and her husband's estate alleges that Habib Bank of Karachi knowingly provided financial services for al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Backed by the bank, terrorists "carried out the kidnapping, ransom, torture, execution and dismemberment of Daniel Pearl and broadcast those images nationwide," the lawsuit said. Also named as a defendant is Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the imprisoned al-Qaeda No. 3 leader and admitted mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, along with an outlawed Islamic charity, the al-Rashid Trust.

The suit claims that the charity, which banked with Habib, was a front for Mohammed and al-Qaeda, and that it "abetted and conspired" in the Pearl slaying. Pakistan banned the charity earlier this year as part of an effort to dry up terrorist financing.

There was no immediate response to a message left with Habib Bank's Manhattan office. Late last year, U.S. regulators announced that the bank had agreed to bolster policies aimed at detecting abuses by terrorist financiers, money launderers and other criminals.

Mariane Pearl said she hopes the lawsuit will allow her family to "delve deeper into the investigation and to bring accountability and punishment." Her husband, who was the South Asia bureau chief for the Journal, was abducted from Karachi while researching a story on Islamic militancy. His remains were later found in Karachi's eastern outskirts.

Pakistan has convicted several men in the case, and their appeals are pending. Mohammed, now being held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said that he personally beheaded Pearl, according to a Pentagon transcript of his testimony at a military tribunal.