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By MAAMOUN YOUSSEF
Associated Press
July 2, 2012
CAIRO — Al-Qaida militants in Yemen have posted online a new video of a
kidnapped Saudi Arabian diplomat appealing to the kingdom’s rulers to grant his
captors’ demands and save his life.
The three-minute clip that appeared on a militant Web site early Monday
was similar to another video released in May: The speaker identified himself as
Abdullah Mohammed Khalifa al-Khaldi, deputy Saudi consul in the Yemeni port
city of Aden, who was kidnapped in March. There was no sign of his captors in
either video.
The abducted diplomat said that al-Qaida would release him if the
kingdom freed female militant prisoners. “Why you have rejected the
organization’s demand to release the women from prison?” he asked, addressing
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah and other senior Saudi officials.
“My fate is tied to these women,”
al-Khaldi said. “Release the women and they will free me the next day.”
The video was produced by al-Malahem, the media arm of the terror
network’s Yemen branch, known as Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. It is
considered by the U.S. to be the movement’s most dangerous offshoot.
Political turmoil caused by an uprising last year has caused a security
vacuum in Yemen. Al-Qaida seized large swaths of territory across the restive
south, but government forces have recently launched several offensives that
forced the militants to flee towns held by them for more than a year.
“Please don’t leave me to an
unknown fate as long as these women are in prison,” said al-Khaldi, who
appeared dressed in a Saudi-style white Arab robe and checkered headdress. The
Saudi Interior Ministry has said earlier that the demands also include paying a
ransom and releasing other male prisoners.
It said that a Saudi citizen on the kingdom’s most-wanted list of terror
suspects, Mashaal Rasheed al-Shawdakhi, relayed the demands by telephone to the
Saudi embassy in Yemen, and that he warned that the diplomat could be killed if
they were not met.
