A group claiming responsibility for killing U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl. Unknown before the Wall Street Journal reporter was killed.
The "NMRPS" appears to be one of a vast array of fringe groups in Pakistan seeking Islamist government there, in direct opposition to the secularist approach of the current president, General Pervez Musharraf.
In the weeks after Pearl disappeared in Karachi (on Jan 23, 2002), reportedly while attempting to contact a reclusive radical sheikh, the NMRPS sent a series of photographs to media outlets showing him alive, but very much in captivity. A month after the kidnapping, Pakistani authorities received — it's not clear who from — a video that seems to show Pearl drawing parallels between his own position in Pakistan and that of U.S. prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and describing his and his family's Jewishness and their connections to Israel.
Then it appears to show Pearl's head being sawn from his body.
At least one version of the video includes a series of demands from the NMRPS. For the record, they are as follows:
NATIONAL MOVEMENT FOR THE RESTORATION OF PAKISTAN SOVEREIGNTY
We still demand the following:
- The immediate release of all U.S. held prisoners in Guatinamo Bay Cuba.
- The return of Pakistani prisoners to Pakistan.
- The immediate end of U.S. presence in Pakistan
- The delivery of F-16 planes that pakistan had paid for and never received.
We asure Americans that they shall never be safe on the Muslim Land of Pakistan.
And if our demands are not met this scene shall be repeated again and again...
(The whole thing is [sic].)
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At this writing, four men are on trial for Daniel Pearl's murder. Their connections to the NMRPS, if they have any, are not currently clear.