On February 1, 2002, terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed beheaded 38-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was in Pakistan for a reporting trip. When the videotape of his execution was released, it showed Pearl acknowledging that he was a Jew, after which a hand holding a knife slit his throat and then severed his head. His body was then cut into ten pieces and buried in a shallow grave near Karachi.
Five years later, before a military tribunal at Guantanamo, KSM boasted that his hand was the one that murdered Pearl: “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in Karachi, Pakistan.”
KSM was also, of course, one of the alleged masterminds of the 9/11 terrorist attack. For 18 years, he has been imprisoned at Guantanamo, awaiting a military trial that was originally set to start in 2021. On July 31, it was announced that KSM had agreed to plead guilty in return for a life sentence. Days later, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin revoked the deal, meaning a death sentence for KSM is no longer off the table.
One person applauding Austin’s rejection of the plea is Judea Pearl, Daniel Pearl’s 88-year-old father. One of the country’s most prominent computer scientists, Judea Pearl told The Free Press that it was important that KSM be executed. “He not only never expressed regret, he bragged about what he did,” Judea said. None of the government’s charges against KSM include the murder of his son, because it could complicate his prosecution on the 9/11 charges—a fact that angers Judea. “As a moral issue, it is clear that my son’s murder should be part of the charges,” he said. Here’s what else he told The Free Press during a short interview on Sunday.
On his son’s last moment:
It pains me to think that the last image Danny saw on this earth was the beastly face of KSM, the embodiment of inhumanity. My son believed that man was created in the image of God, and he treated every person as though they were also created in the image of God. I’m really sorry that Danny left this planet with that sort of image.
On the plea deal that Austin overturned:
Changing the possibility of a death sentence to life imprisonment sounds like they are reducing the sentence, which sends a bad message to the world. It suggests there were some kind of extenuating circumstances, that his crime was not as horrible as we had thought, or that he had expressed some regret or become less inhumane. But all of that is wrong.
On how the U.S. should avenge Daniel Pearl’s death:
A new trial should start with a new charge about KSM’s responsibility for the murder of my son. Witnesses must be called, evidence must be considered, and new charges must be brought. If the allegations for murdering Danny are not brought up in court, then the KSM prosecution will always be incomplete.
On how his son approached his job:
Danny looked at every person as an object of curiosity, not fear. So he traveled through the Middle East and northeast Africa with his violin and his laptop, and he was very interested in getting the Western reader to understand the hardship and the suffering of the ordinary people in those countries.
On sending a message about KSM’s crimes:
I seek justice. I know that’s a poetic term, and I’m not a poet, I’m an engineer, and I look at things pragmatically. The pragmatic fact is that there are thousands and thousands of young Muslims who view KSM as a hero—the one who had the guts to stand up to the evil United States. Our job is to tell those young people that KSM is a criminal, not a hero. He is a criminal, and not only a criminal but a unique type of criminal, and that’s why the death penalty is important.
—As told to Joe Nocera
To support more of our work, become a Free Press subscriber today:
KSM should be tried, convicted and executed for his heinous crimes
Bravo! Well-stated. The death penalty was designed for people like KSM!