The intrepid mujahedin, keeping the world safe from septuagenarians with ideas for aid and development. Jihad causes poverty. “Al-Qaeda says it kidnapped Warren Weinstein in Pakistan,” from BBC News, December 1:
Al-Qaeda says it has 70-year-old US aid expert Warren Weinstein, who was kidnapped by armed men in the Pakistani city of Lahore nearly four months ago.
In a video, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri said he would be freed if the US stopped air strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, among other demands.
Mr Weinstein is a former USAID worker who has lived in Pakistan for five years.
US officials have not said publicly who they believed was holding him.
“Just as the Americans detain whomever they suspect may be connected to al-Qaeda or the Taliban even in the slightest of ways, we have detained this man who has been involved with US aid to Pakistan since the 1970s,” Zawahiri said in the 31-minute video.
‘Retaliation’
He also demanded that America stop air strikes on Somalia and Yemen, according to a US monitoring group, Site Intelligence.
And he called for the release of al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects around the world, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombers.
Zawahiri confirmed, too, an announcement by US officials in August that his Libyan deputy, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, had been killed in an air strike in Pakistan’s north-western tribal region.
“The retaliation, with permission from Allah, will be taken against those crusader Westerners who killed him [Rahman] and his two sons, and killed hundreds of thousands of our brothers, sons, women, and sheikhs, and occupied our countries [and] looted our wealth,” said Zawahiri. […]
[Weinstein] was said to be the country director in Pakistan for JE Austin Associates, an American firm that advises a range of Pakistani business and government sectors.
Mr Weinstein reportedly lived mainly in Islamabad, but also travelled to Lahore. He was described on the firm’s website as an “expert in international development with 25 years’ experience”…..