NEW YORK – The father of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl said Sunday the anniversary of his son's death should be viewed as an opportunity to fight hatred as well as to mourn.
Judea Pearl spoke at one of several memorial services for his son planned throughout the world. Daniel Pearl was killed one year ago by terrorists in Pakistan.
"Danny loved life," Judea Pearl said. "He did not court death. He did not jump into the fire, rather he tried to put out the fire with the only weapon he had: 'Come to your senses.'"
About 200 people attended the service at Congregation B'nai Jeshurun in Manhattan.
Larry Ingrassia, Pearl's former editor at the Wall Street Journal's London bureau, said at the service that Pearl was passionate about seeking the truth and about "what it was like to be in the shoes of the people who were often dispossessed and powerless."
An interfaith service was also held at the Friendship Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York. Jon Schienberg, a spokesman for the Daniel Pearl Foundation, asked those attending the interfaith service to pray for "a sane and humane world, free of the hatred that took Danny's life."
Other services were planned in Los Angeles, London, Paris and Jerusalem.
Pearl, 38, was kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan, on Jan. 23, 2002, and a month later was executed by his captors. A grisly videotape of his death was sent to U.S. diplomats in Karachi.
At the time of his abduction, Pearl was probing links between Pakistani Islamic extremists and Richard Reid, a British-born terrorist who had been charged with attempting to blow up an American jetliner with a bomb in his shoe. Reid has since been convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
Last July, a Pakistani court convicted four Islamic militants of Pearl's murder. During the trial, his dismembered body was found by police in a shallow grave near a religious school.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox