Daniel Pearl was an idealistic young American journalist who was murdered by al-Qaeda in Pakistan in 2002. I was fortunate to know him. It was in January 1997 and he was researching a story for his newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. He called me early in the morning requesting an interview with me concerning a rumour he had heard regarding a dispute that erupted between the two Anne Frank organizations in the Netherlands and Switzerland over the use of trademarks. He was incredulous that the two Anne Frank organizations set up with such good intent by Otto Frank could not see eye-to-eye.
The young American man rang my doorbell on a dark January night in 1997. He parked his dripping umbrella considerately outside the front door, came inside, removed his navy blue preppy-style raincoat and sat himself down on my lounge sofa. He asked me to call him Danny and we spoke for an hour over coffee. I deflected his probing about the trademark issues that had blown up between the two Anne Frank organizations by speaking about Anne Frank’s true legacy. He was intrigued by the educational work the Anne Frank Trust was doing in the name of a talented writer killed so tragically young and brutally. I shudder when I think that on that evening Danny was not to know that in just a few years there would be educational work done in his memory too.
Danny Pearl followed up our meeting with several phone calls to verify some of the things we had discussed. I also arranged for him to interview Eva Schloss at her home in London and Hans Westra, Director of the Anne Frank House, in Amsterdam. I subsequently read the article filed by Danny, and found it very fair, without sensationalizing what was a delicate situation.
I thought no more about this encounter until the publicity surrounding the shock execution of the young American Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in February 2002. The terrified young hostage whose photo was flashed around the world after his capture, sitting on the bare floor dressed in a pink shell suit with his wrists in handcuffs and a gun pointing at his head, bore so little resemblance to the affable, intellectual young man in a suit, tie and navy raincoat who had visited my London home that I didn’t make any connection between the two. That was until I opened The Times newspaper the morning after the news broke of his murder.
The obituary photo showed a familiar face, with round glasses and in suit and tie. I then read that Daniel Pearl had worked for two years in London between 1996 and 1998 as Wall Street Journal Bureau Chief. In a frenzied mission I looked back through the Anne Frank Trust’s press archive and found the piece – published on 30 January 1997, and filed by ‘Staff Reporter Daniel Pearl.’
Following his posting in London, Danny had gone on to Mumbai as the Wall Street Journal’s South East Asia Bureau Chief. Five months after the 9/11 attacks, in February 2002, he went to Karachi in Pakistan to follow up a lead to an al-Qaeda suspect called Mubarak Ali Gulani, who was supposedly connected to the ‘shoe bomber’ Richard Reid. Danny never arrived at the meeting. On his way to the café rendezvous, he was abducted by a militant group.
Just two days before his abduction, Danny had learned that his Parisian-born wife Mariane was expecting a baby boy. Thrilled by this news, he told her of his choice of name for his son, Adam. In May 2002, three months after Danny’s murder, Mariane Pearl gave birth to Adam. She went on to write a book about her husband, A Mighty Heart, which was turned into a movie starring Angelina Jolie as Mariane. Mariane channelled her intense grief into bringing up her son and tackling important causes through her journalism and writing, for which she has won many awards.
On 10 March 2007, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an alleged al-Qaeda operative who was reported to be third in command under Osama bin Laden, claimed responsibility for the murder of Daniel Pearl. In a confession read during his Tribunal hearing, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said ‘I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan.’
Danny’s parents Judea and Ruth Pearl set up a foundation in Los Angeles in their son’s memory. The aims of the Daniel Pearl Foundation are to promote cross-cultural dialogue and understanding, to counter cultural and religious intolerance, to cultivate responsible and balanced journalism, and to inspire unity and friendship through music. My admiration for this family was huge, but I never suspected my path would cross again with the Pearl family, especially as Danny’s parents were in LA and his widow Mariane and son were living in Barcelona.
In 2014, I attended the Global Conference on Sexual Violence against Women held in London. Angelina Jolie (soon to become a Dame) and our then Foreign Secretary William Hague were co-chairs of the conference and had kindly agreed to sign the Anne Frank Declaration together. When the Anne Frank Trust’s chairman Daniel Mendoza and I entered the room where the signing was to take place, William and Angelina were already sitting at the table with the Anne Frank Declaration placed in front of them, beaming widely and with pens at the ready. The two clearly had a great rapport.
Angelina was as beautiful in real life as she is on the screen. I gave her a copy of the credit card-size version of the Declaration she had just signed, and asked her, as I do to all signers, to keep it in her wallet as a reminder of what she had just signed. She asked me for more copies for her six children and told me that as they were all being home-schooled, she would ensure they learned about Anne Frank.
At the end of our warm and friendly chat, I mentioned to Angelina that I had known Danny Pearl. ‘But Mariane is here at this conference. I must get you two together,’ she said. Angelina asked me for my business card, passed it to her assistant and within two hours Mariane had emailed me. Due to conflicting commitments on both our sides, Mariane and I didn’t actually get to meet that week, but we spoke on the phone.
Seven months later Mariane Pearl and I did get to meet. Mariane was the worthy recipient of the 2015 Anne Frank Award for Moral Courage, presented to her at our annual lunch to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. She flew from Barcelona to London to receive it. In her acceptance speech, as well as speaking about Danny, Mariane Pearl, born Mariane van Neyenhoff, told the 600-strong audience how her family had their own ‘Anne Frank experience’. Mariane’s grandfather was a Dutch diamond merchant and she had only recently discovered that her aunt had also been hidden from the Nazis in Amsterdam.
I often think of the young man in the navy-blue raincoat who came to my home on that dark winter night. I think of his loneliness and fear in those days of captivity and his last moments, when he knew his imminent fate. Danny refused the sedative offered to him before these animals who masquerade as human beings took a knife to his throat. He read out to camera the propaganda statement written for him by his captors, giving clues to the world that this was obviously not written by him, but preceded this with the words, ‘My name is Daniel Pearl. I’m a Jewish American from Encino, California, USA. On my father’s side the family is Zionist. My father’s Jewish, my mother’s Jewish, I’m Jewish. My family follows Judaism. We’ve made numerous family visits to Israel.’ Then his throat was cut and his head, with a brain brimming with intelligence, compassion, wisdom and talent, was cut from his body.