Al Qaida claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of a Jewish American man who has gone missing Pakistan, the group’s leader said on Thursday, citing a lifting of Israel’s “siege” of the Gaza Strip as one condition toward securing the man’s release.

In an audio recording issued on Islamist websites, Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri claimed that the militant group had abducted Warren Weinstein, an American development expert, in the Pakistani city of Lahore in August.

Weinstein, about 70 years old, had been working on a project in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal areas where Pakistani troops have been battling Islamist insurgents for years.

In exchange for Weinstein’s release, an ABC report claimed, Zawahiri requests the lifting of the Israeli “siege” of the Gaza strip, the complete end of “bombings by America and its allies in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and Gaza,” as well as the release of all Al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners.

For more, go to Haaretz.com

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