February 1, 2002: Daniel Pearl, an American journalist investigating al-Qaeda, is murdered in Karachi, Pakistan, by terrorists calling themselves the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty. He was 38 years old.
He was born on October 10, 1963 in Princeton, New Jersey, where his father taught at Princeton University. His father got a teaching position at UCLA, and so Daniel grew up outside Los Angeles in Encino, California. He graduated from Stanford University, and wrote for The Wall Street Journal. The paper assigned him to their bureaus in Atlanta in 1990, Washington in 1993, London in 1996, and Paris in 1999. He covered NATO's liberation in Kosovo that year.
Also that year, in Paris, he met and married French journalist Mariane van Neyenhoff, a former reporter and columnist for Glamour magazine. They settled in Mumbai, India, after the Journal made Daniel their Southeast Asia bureau chief. They travelled to Karachi, the largest city in Pakistan (Islamabad is their capital), which he used as a base for reporting on the United States' "War On Terrorism" following the terrorist attacks on America by Al-Qaeda terrorists on September 11, 2001.
On January 23, 2002, on his way to what he thought was an interview with Islamic scholar Mubarak Ali Gilani at the Village Restaurant in downtown Karachi, about the alleged training of "shoe bomber" Richard Reid at one of Gilani's camps in Pakistan, Pearl was kidnapped near the Metropole Hotel by several Islamist jihadist groups working in collaboration.
A few days after his disappearance, Pearl's captors released a video in which he was recorded condemning American foreign policy, and repeatedly telling the camera that he and his family were Jewish and had visited Israel -- which, to the captors, were crimes, but, to reasonable people, were simply reflections of heritage. Then the video showed one of the kidnappers killing Daniel by slitting his throat, and then severing his head. The killers were found and convicted, and remain alive in prison.
Daniel and Mariane's son, Adam Daniel Pearl, was born in Paris on May 28, 2002, approximately four months after Daniel's abduction and death. Mariane Pearl remains a freelance journalist. Their son Adam Pearl now attends Harvard University. (UPDATE: Adam graduated in 2025.)
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February 1, 2002 was a Friday. Baseball was out of season. The Super Bowl was played 2 days later, with the New England Patriots beating the Los Angeles Rams, 20-17. The NHL was in its All-Star Break.
There were 9 games played in the NBA:
* The New York Knicks lost to the Indiana Pacers, 92-87 at the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis.
* The Minnesota Timberwolves beat the Boston Celtics, 98-95 in overtime at the FleetCenter (now the TD Garden) in Boston.
* The Washington Wizards beat the Atlanta Hawks, 97-90 at the MCI Center in Washington.
* The Miami Heat beat the San Antonio Spurs, 88-83 at the American Airlines Arena (now the Kaseya Center) in Miami.
* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Memphis Grizzlies, 100-85 at the Pyramid Arena in Memphis.
* The Charlotte Hornets beat the Houston Rockets, 73-72 at The Summit in Houston. It's now the
Central Campus of televangelist Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church.
* The Orlando Magic beat the Detroit Pistons, 85-83 at The palace in the Detroit suburb of Auburn Hills, Michigan.
* The Phoenix Suns beat the Golden State Warriors, 104-98 at the America West Arena (now the Mortgage Matchup Center) in Phoenix.
* And the Sacramento Kings beat the Denver Nuggets, 132-96 at the ARCO Arena in Sacramento.
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