Pakistani police say they have narrowed their search for a missing American journalist to a banned militant group with suspected ties to reputed terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden.

Police and diplomats say a break in the two-week-old case came Tuesday, when three men in custody confessed to sending e-mails with photographs of kidnapped journalist Daniel Pearl with a gun to his head.

Police also have seized the computer used to send the messages, and have linked the messages to Sheikh Omar Saeed, a top leader of the banned Islamic militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad. Mr. Pearl, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, disappeared in Karachi January 23, while on his way to interview a radical Islamic leader. Kidnappers have threatened to kill him unless the United States releases all Pakistani prisoners captured in Afghanistan in the war on terrorism. The United States has rejected the demand.

At the time of his abduction, Mr. Pearl was investigating links between Pakistani militants and Richard Reid, a man taken into custody by American authorities for allegedly trying to blow up a U.S. commercial airliner with explosives hidden in his shoes.

Sheikh Omar, the son of a London clothes merchant, was arrested by Indian police in 1994 in connection with the abduction of British tourists in Indian Kashmir.

He was freed from an Indian jail in 1999 along with another militant, in exchange for hostages on an Indian airliner hijacked to the Afghan city of Kandahar.

Pakistani police say they also are looking for another senior Jaish-e-Mohammad leader, who may be using the alias Imtiaz Siddiqui.

Some information for this report provided by AP and Reuters.

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