The American reporter Daniel Pearl worked for the Wall Street Journal for 12 years and was their South Asia bureau chief at the time of his death.

Mr Pearl, 38, was born in Princeton, New Jersey and graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor's degree in communications.

I'm pregnant, I was sick. Otherwise I would have gone with him

Daniel Pearl's wife, Marianne

He joined The Wall Street Journal in November 1990, initially as a reporter in the Atlanta bureau. Then in 1993 he moved to the Washington office to cover transportation before beginning a series of overseas postings.

The members of a radical Islamic group in Pakistan who claimed to have kidnapped him said Daniel Pearl was a member of the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad.

But Mr Pearl's employers vehemently denied that he was an agent of any government.

"Mr Pearl, a US citizen born in the US, and a working journalist all of his adult life, is not an agent of any government or agency. He is a reporter for us - nothing more, nothing less," the Wall Street Journal said in a statement following his kidnap.

Overseas correspondent

In January, 1996, Mr Pearl moved to London, where he remained until February, 1998, when he transferred to The Wall Street Journal's Paris bureau.

In December, 2000, he moved to Bombay where he was based for the last two years of his life, working as the newspaper's South Asia bureau chief.

He and his wife had been residing in Karachi

Mr Pearl was married to Mariane, a French woman, whom he met while working in Paris.

She was pregnant with their first child when he disappeared.

The couple had been living in the Pakistani city of Karachi while Mr Pearl tried to arrange an interview with a Muslim cleric, Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani, head of the small militant Islamic group, Tanzeem ul-Fuqra.

Mrs Pearl is herself a freelance journalist, who would typically work on stories alongside her husband.

Tributes

In an interview with CNN Mrs Pearl said both she and her husband believed that their role as journalists was to create dialogue.

As tributes flooded in, The Wall Street Journal described Mr Pearl as an "outstanding colleague, a great reporter, and a dear friend of many at the Journal."

"His murder is an act of barbarism that makes a mockery of everything Danny's kidnappers claimed to believe in," a statement from the paper said.

A journalist at the St Petersburg Florida Times who worked with Mr Pearl in the 1990s recalled her lovable colleague.

"He was the sweetest guy - you know how some journalists could be such jerks," said Alecia Swasy.

"You could forgive Danny anything because he was such a dear sweet soul. There is a special place in hell for the people who did this."

Terry Anderson, a former Associated Press reporter who was held hostage for nearly seven years in Lebanon, described Mr Pearl as a "wonderful reporter and a very decent man".