- 0:00:24 Mariane’s Prelude
- Mariane: The day after 9/11 Danny and I flew to Pakistan. He was the South Asia Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal, and I was working for French Public Radio. Thousands of journalists from all over the world arrived in Islamabad to cover the war in neighboring Afghanistan. On the 7th October the bombing began… The forces of the Taliban government were rapidly overwhelmed. And with the end of the war, many journalists moved on. Danny and I stayed. Reporting on nuclear weapons, Al Qaeda, secret Jihadi training camps and the million refugees still living in Peshawar, the birthplace of the Taliban. As the hunt for Bin Laden continued in the mountains of Tora Bora, many fighters slipped back across the border into Pakistan looking for a safe place to regroup. And many people in Pakistan saw America as the enemy and the Taliban as their Muslim brothers. By the end of January I was five months pregnant, and we were ready to go home. But there was one more interview that Danny wanted. We flew to Karachi, one of the largest cities in the world. The main port of entry to and departure from Pakistan. A vast sprawling, chaotic city where there are so many people nobody knows how to count them. How do you find one man amongst all this?
- 0:03:55 Dad gives Adam his name
- Daniel: How is my little embryo?
Mariane: Good
Daniel: Yeah
Mariane: Yeah
Daniel: (whispering to Mariane’s pregnant belly)
Mariane: Secret?
Daniel: Yeah, I have a name for him.
Mariane: You do? What?
Daniel: Adam
- 0:05:25 Advice on staying in public
- Daniel: I want to ask your advice about something. I’m supposed to meet tonight with Sheikh Gilani.
Kaleem Yusuf: Where are you supposed to meet him?
Daniel: At the Village Restaurant.
Kaleem Yusuf: Provided you meet him at a public place you should be alright.
- 0:13:15 Discovering Sheikh Gilani
- Mariane: Jamaat Ul-Fuqra… Fugra?
Asra: Fugra, Fuqra, who cares?
Mariane: Community of the Impoverished. Their aim is to purify Islam through Violence… Ten unsolved assassinations… Seventeen firebombing cases between 1979 and 1990… Possible link to Richard Reid, the shoe bomber… They are suspected to have connection to terrorists who bombed World Trade Center in ’93. I didn’t know Gilani was that serious.
- 0:13:48 Daniel interviewing an Islamic man
- Interviewee: No, Sheikh Gilani is a peaceful man. He’s always upset when people die.
Daniel: So he was upset that the World Trade Centers were bombed?
Interviewee: Yes, because many of his followers are American. Do you know who’s behind the attack on the World Trade Centers?
Daniel: Who?
Interviewee: The Jews
Daniel: Really?
Interviewee: Mossad are the only ones who could have organized such an event. Do you know that 4,000 Jews who normally worked in the Towers didn’t turn up that day? What are you? A Christian?
Daniel: No, Jewish
- 0:15:33 Talking to Danny’s parents
- Mariane: Danny had an interview and he didn’t come back last night
Judea: Mariane, this is Judea. Who was he interviewing?
Mariane: A religious leader. His name was Sheikh Gilani
Judea: Does anyone there know that he’s Jewish?
Mariane: No, I don’t think so.
- 0:26:43 Why haven't we heard?
- Randall Bennett: This is for you. It’s as much as I could get together in 24 hours. There’s a lot about Gilani and other people who are starting to appear.
Mariane: Why have we not heard from the kidnappers?
Randall Bennett: Well, they’re gonna wanna get Danny to a safe place before they make contact. And we’ve got the police doing everything they can to make it difficult. I want you to know that they consider Danny a high-value hostage and they’ll wanna keep him alive.
- 0:26:57 High-Value Hostage
- Mariane: Why have we not heard from the kidnappers?
Randall Bennett: Well, they’re gonna wanna get Danny to a safe place before they make contact, and we’ve got the police doing everything they can to make it difficult. I want you to know that they consider Danny a high-value hostage and they’ll wanna keep him alive.
- 0:33:07 He's Jewish
- Mariane: Danny is not a religious man. But . . . but he’s Jewish, by birth.
Captain: Okay. Who else knows this?
Mariane: He didn’t advertise it but he would never deny if somebody asked him.
Captain: Okay. But don’t tell anybody.
Mariane: I won’t.
- 0:35:15 An E-Mail From the Kidnappers
- Asra: There’s an e-mail from the kidnappers. “The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistan Sovereignty†has captured CIA officer Daniel Pearl who has been posing as a journalist of the Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately, he is at present being kept in very inhumane circumstances, quite similar, in fact, to the way Pakistanis and nationals of other sovereign countries have been kept in Cuba by the American Army. If the Americans keep our countrymen in better conditions, we will better the conditions of Mr. Pearl and all other Americans that we capture.
Steve Levine: Jang claims he’s Mossad, and now they’re claiming he’s CIA.
Captain: These things they do to try and shock you. They’re asking for the release of jet plane.
- 0:37:37 Fuck you
- Mariane: You see that? He’s smiling. He has a gun to his head and he’s smiling and he’s telling me he’s okay. Yeah. He says "fuck you" to them.
- 0:47:53 Mariane’s Television Interview
- Interviewer: Mrs. Pearl, the group holding your husband has given a 24-hour deadline for the United States to meet their demands or else they say that they’ll kill your husband Daniel. Do you have a message to that group?
Mariane: Yeah, I have a message. Three different points I want to talk about. The first one is I want to remind them that my husband and I are both journalists. We are two people who met and fell in love because we have the same ideal. He’s someone who… I never saw him say a lie. In his journalism, I’ve never seen anyone so honest.
Interviewer: And how are you coping with this?
Mariane: I haven’t slept for six days if that’s what you’re asking. But I have hope. I am not desperate because I believe that if I stop trying to create this dialogue, then I stop believing in everything else and I can’t do that. I’m pregnant.
Interviewer: And if you could say one thing to your husband now, what would you tell him?
Mariane: I love you.
- 0:50:57 Don't collapse
- Randall Bennett (to Mariane): Don’t you collapse now. Everybody else can collapse but not you. Don’t you collapse.
- 1:27:40 Daniel Is Dead
- John Bussey: Mariane. I’m sorry. Danny didn’t make it.
Mariane: (Screams) No! No! No! No! No! No! No! How do you know… How do you know? No, because… Because we’ve, you know, been through this before. They can…
Captain: We have a video.
Bauman: They had a knife, and they used it in a way that leaves no doubt.
Mariane: What does that mean?
Bauman: Mariane, he was beheaded.
Mariane: Oh, God. No, no, no… What? What? No, no. You watched that? I never, never want to see it!
- 1:35:38 Mariane’s Thanks
- Mariane: I just wanted to say something to everybody. I want to, I want to thank you for all of your work and all of your effort and your kindness and I know how much you wanted to find and bring Danny home. You did not fail, you know? Danny’s dead, but the kidnappers, their point is to terrorize people, right? I am not terrorized. And you can’t be terrorized. I am very grateful to all of you. Very, very grateful. So thank you. So, please, let’s eat.
- 1:39:31 Mariane’s Conclusion
- Mariane: They found Danny’s body cut into 10 pieces. Nobody told me this. I learned it in an e-mail that was attached by accident to another e-mail sent to me. I decided that, before Adam is born, I have to confront everything that happened to Danny. He was held in an isolated shack in a compound on the outskirts of Karachi. One day, when he was unshackled to go to the toilet, he tried to escape. They caught him and chained him to the engine of a car. Another time he tried to break loose when he was walking with his captors. Once he shouted to a passerby. Then, one day, probably February 1st, three men who spoke Arabic were brought to the compound. Danny argued with one of them. Then they turned on the video.
- 1:40:52 Daniel Pearl’s Last Words (video footage)
- Daniel: My name is Daniel Pearl. My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I’m Jewish.
Mariane: Maybe they made him say this, but I know he was undefeated because of the next thing he says. Something the kidnappers could not have known.
Daniel: In the town of Benei Beraq in Israel there’s a street called Chaim Pearl Street which is named after my great-grandfather who was one of the founders of the town.
Mariane: I force myself to imagine all of it, and when it is over I know there is nothing that can happen that I won’t have the courage to face. This film is for Adam.
