Al Qaeda is holding a US aid worker captured last August in Pakistan, the group’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri said in a statement seen Thursday by a monitoring group.
Zawahiri said al Qaeda had abducted USAID worker Warren Weinstein, “who is neck-deep in American aid to Pakistan”, and that the White House had the ability to get him freed if it halts US airstrikes.
Warren Weinstein, 70, country director for US-based consultancy J.E. Austin Associates, was snatched after gunmen tricked their way into his home on August 13, days before he was due to return to the United States.
Zawahiri claimed responsibility for the abduction and called on Washington to end air strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, and release the 1993 World Trade Center bombers and relatives of Osama bin Laden, in exchange for Weinstein’s release.
“Just as the Americans detain all whom they suspect of links to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, even remotely, we detained this man who has been neck-deep in American aid to Pakistan since the 1970s,” the SITE Intelligence Group quoted Zawahiri as saying in a 31-minute video sent to jihadist forums.
The video showed no proof of life for Weinstein, but the message appears to be the first significant lead in the case in weeks.
A spokeswoman for the US embassy in Islamabad said officials there had seen the statement.
“Investigations are still ongoing. We’re in regular contact with the family,” she told AFP.
Pakistani officials were not immediately reachable for comment.
Zawahiri, who took over as leader after bin Laden was killed by US commandos in Pakistan in May, also said his number two, Atiyah abd al-Rahman, was killed in a US air strike in Waziristan in Pakistan’s tribal northwest in August.
Among the list of eight demands in exchange for Weinstein, Al-Qaeda called for the release of “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdul Rahman, Ramzi Yousef and Sayyid Nosair, who are tied to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
SITE said that Zawahiri directly addressed the hostage’s family, telling them that US President Barack Obama had the power to secure Weinstein’s release but that he was “dodging” his responsibility.
“He might say to you: ‘I sought to release your relative, but Al-Qaeda was stubborn.’ Do not believe him. He might
Al Qaeda holding Wenstein
