December 28, 2013
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Al-Qaida’s American captive pleads with Obama
December 25, 2013
Warren Weinstein as he looked before he was kidnapped.
Warren Weinstein, an international development expert who was abducted from his home in Pakistan in 2011, has resurfaced in a new al-Qaida video, the Washington Post reports.
His al-Qaida captors have been using him as a pawn to get “unspecified prisoners” released and stop U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan. It’s the second time Weinstein has spoken on video to plead for his life and tell the Obama administration to heed al-Qaida’s demands. It is not known whether the former USAID contractor has been coerced to make the videos.
He says he feels “totally abandoned and forgotten” and asks President Obama to negotiate with his kidnappers: “You are now in your second term as president of the United States and that means that you can take hard decisions without worrying about reelection.”
But there are moments when Weinstein appears to be speaking from the heart.
“The years have taken their toll,” Weinstein says in the latest video.
That they have. The 72-year-old, thin and drawn, is barely recognizable.
He tells his family, “I would like them to know I love them very much and I think about each and every one of them every moment of every day.”
The video was emailed to several members of the media. In a note to journalists that accompanied the video, he asks reporters not to forget him, saying he doesn’t want to “just become another statistic.”
Weinstein is barely recognizable in the latest video made by al-Qaida.
Read more at the Post.
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