Hostage at gunpoint - or hoax?

Manacled and with a pistol pointed at his head: is this a photograph of missing American reporter Daniel Pearl? Or is it a callous hoax?

The Wall Street Journal, which employs the 38-year-old journalist, says the photo, sent by email to the Washington Post on Saturday, "appears to be legitimate". Mr Pearl disappeared last week after reportedly going to interview leaders of an Islamic fundamentalist group in Karachi sympathetic to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorists.

However, Pakistani police who seized and interrogated five members of the alleged kidnap gang for five hours yesterday, now claim the photo is a hoax and they have no idea where the reporter is. A Karachi police spokesman said today: "We have checked the email. I can only say it's a hoax and we're not taking it seriously."

In the email to the Post, the alleged kidnappers, calling themselves the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, accused the journalist of being a CIA agent and sent four photographs, supposedly of the reporter with chains on his hands and feet, demanding better treatment for captured al Qaeda fighters being held by the US in Cuba.

Pakistani police launched a nationwide hunt for Mr Pearl after he was reported missing on Wednesday. However, Brigadier Mukhtar Ahmed, head of security in Karachi, said today: "We don't have any clue where he is. The search is still going on."

In the email, the supposed terrorist group said Mr Pearl was being held in "inhuman conditions" comparable to those of suspected terrorists in US custody. Pakistan police sources said they believed Mr Pearl might have been kidnapped by Harkat ul-Mujahedeen, which has close ties to al Qaeda and is on the US government's list of terrorist organisations. A number of Harkat fighters are known to have been killed in Afghanistan during the bombing campaign.

Mr Pearl, a reporter based in Bombay, disappeared when he went to visit a source near Karachi for a story about terrorism, the Wall Street Journal said.

Steven Goldstein, a vice president of Dow Jones & Co, the Journal's owner, said the photographs appeared to be legitimate but would not be distributed.

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