WASHINGTON: Al Qaeda is holding a US aid worker who was kidnapped in August in Pakistan, the extremist group’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri said in a Thursday statement seen by a US-based monitoring group.

Zawahiri reportedly claimed  in an audio message released on jihadist forums, that al Qaeda had on August 13 abducted the elderly USAID contractor Warren Weinstein, who was “neck-deep in American aid to Pakistan,” the SITE Intelligence Group said.

He said that the White House could secure the 70-year-old Weinstein’s release if it halts air strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, and releases the 1993 World Trade Center bombers and relatives of Osama bin Laden.

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