Karachi, Pakistan ? An al-Qaida suspect arrested along with alleged Sept. 11 organizer Ramzi Binalshibh has been identified as one of the killers of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, a senior police official said Tuesday.

The report is the strongest evidence yet of an al-Qaida connection to Pearl’s kidnapping and murder, but may complicate the government’s case against four men already convicted of the crime.

The police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the identification was made by Fazal Karim, one of three Pakistanis held but not charged in the kidnap-slaying.

Karim was taken Friday to a Pakistani intelligence agency safe house where 10 suspects, including Binalshibh, were held, the police official said. Those in the group, most of whom were Yemenis, were arrested in raids Sept. 10 and 11 in Karachi, authorities have said.

Karim identified one of the Yemenis as being part of a group of three Arabs who cut Pearl’s throat three days after he tried to escape, the police official said.

The official refused to identify Pearl’s alleged killer by name but said he was not among the five suspects, including Binalshibh, who were handed over to U.S. authorities Monday and flown out of the country.

Pearl, 38, was kidnapped Jan. 23 in Karachi while researching links between Pakistani Islamic extremists and Richard C. Reid, who was arrested in December on a flight from Paris to Miami with explosives in his shoe.

Four militants, including British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, were convicted of the crime in July. Saeed was sentenced to death by hanging and the other three received life sentences. All four have appealed.

While the trial was under way, police found Pearl’s dismembered body in a shallow grave near an Islamic religious school in Karachi.

Police investigators, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they were led to the grave by Karim and two others Naeem Bukhari and Zubair Chishti who admitted a role in Pearl’s kidnapping. The three have never been charged, and Pakistani authorities have not even acknowledged officially that they are being held.

The prosecution in the trial of Saeed and the others maintained that the discovery of the body was not essential to the case because the remains had not been identified. The government announced only after the trial that DNA results confirmed the remains were Pearl’s.

Saeed’s lawyer, Abdul Waheed Katpar, said he was unaware of the possibility that one of the Pearl killers was in custody. But if true, he said, “then my client is out,” meaning that he would be freed.