Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was murdered last year because he knew too much of Pakistan's nuclear secrets and links with the Al Qaeda, leading French philosopher and President Jacques Chirac's special envoy to Afghanistan, Bernard-Henri Levy, told the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Levy, who returned recently from investigating the murder in Pakistan, said Pearl was abducted for one reason and killed for another.

According to the Frenchman, Pearl was abducted because he was Jewish and American in a part of the world where it is 'not an identity, it is a sin -- it is a crime'.

His captors realised in the course of their conversations with him that he knew too much to be released again.

According to Levy, Pearl had found out that Pakistan's nuclear weapons were 'less controlled than [President] Mr [Pervez] Musharraf pretends and less under control than the secret services of Occidental powers believe'.

Also, Pearl had reportedly found information about a shadowy Islamic extremist leader. "He was on the point of discovering the identity, background, roots and area of influence of a very strange man who is called Gilani," Levy told the BBC.

According to Levy, Gilani is the chief of a sect that has one foot in Pakistan and another in America and is also the guru of suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden.

Levy also claimed to have found information about Pearl's killer, the British-born terrorist Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh. According to the Frenchman, Omar Sheikh is not only connected to the Al Qaeda, but also the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence.

The Frenchman has written a book on the murder, which has shot up European bestseller lists this year. Its English version -- Who killed Daniel Pearl? -- will hit stores in the United States and Britain in September this year.