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Al Qaeda deadline to kill U.S. hostage looms
Thousands of Saudi security officers backed by FBI agents scoured Riyadh for an American hostage held by al Qaeda, while the engineer's family pleaded for his life before a Friday deadline to kill him.
Osama bin Laden's network has said it will execute Paul Marshal Johnson, kidnapped last week, unless the Saudi government frees jailed militants. It has not said at what exact time the deadline Friday expires. Saudi officials insist the kingdom will not give in to the group's demands.
"Please release my father. He is an innocent man. He loves Muslims. Saudi Arabia was his home," Johnson's son Paul told Dubai-based Al Arabiya television from the United States.
Johnson's Thai wife Thanom urged U.S. authorities to save her husband. "When I see pictures of my husband, I hurt so much, I fall to the floor," she said in broken English. "He is sick man, he need medicine. He hasn't done anything wrong."
A senior Saudi official in Washington, who declined to be named, said a team of about 20 FBI agents specialized in hostage rescue and negotiations were working alongside the Saudis.
He said that for the past two days, more than 15,000 Saudi officers and security forces have been searching throughout Riyadh for Johnson, going door-to-door in some neighborhoods considered hotbeds for al Qaeda militants and sympathizers.
"More than 1,200 Saudi homes have been searched as of Thursday night. The searches continue," he added.
Prominent Saudi cleric Sheikh Saleh bin Abdullah al-Humaid, in a sermon at Muslim Friday prayers in Mecca's Grand Mosque, denounced hostage-taking and murder as grave sins under Islam, the most senior Saudi cleric to do so.
"Killing a soul without justification is one of the gravest sins under Islam, it is as bad as of polytheism," the state-appointed cleric said at Islam's holiest shrine.
"Whoever kills any person under our protection will not go to heaven. The blood of people under our protection is forbidden...they are on par with Muslims," he added.
His comments, however, are unlikely to sway al Qaeda, which is fighting to topple the pro-U.S. monarchy and drive Westerners out of the world's largest oil exporter.
U.S. WARNS OF MORE ATTACKS
The State Department warned U.S. citizens in Saudi Arabia Thursday of serious threats to their safety and repeated advice strongly urging them to leave the kingdom, which has been battling al Qaeda for the past year.
Johnson's kidnapping, which follows a spate of suicide bombings and shootings in the past six weeks, has raised the stakes in al Qaeda's war against the Saudi government.
Washington said it would use every appropriate resource to gain Johnson's release but would make no concessions. De facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah, showing no sign of compromise, said the kingdom would strike soon against al Qaeda.
In an interview with NBC's "Today" show Thursday, the hostage's visibly upset son, Paul Johnson Jr., urged the Saudi and American governments to cut a deal with the kidnappers.
Johnson, an employee of U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin, is the first Westerner to be kidnapped in a wave of militant attacks in the kingdom that began more than a year ago.
Al Qaeda said it carried out the attacks and kidnapping to avenge U.S. abuse of Muslim prisoners. Tuesday, the group released a video on a Web site showing a blindfolded Johnson. Al Qaeda, blamed for the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities, has vowed 2004 will be "bloody" for the kingdom. Saudi Arabia, birthplace of Islam, has arrested or killed scores of militants in a crackdown on al Qaeda. But Riyadh has so far failed to reassure tens of thousands of Westerners on how it plans to protect them or thwart further attacks. |
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