US Hostage Paul Johnson Killed by Al Qaeda Militants
Melanie Hunter
Deputy Managing Editor
(CNSNews.com) - American hostage Paul Johnson was reportedly killed and beheaded Friday by the al Qaeda militants that kidnapped him in Saudi Arabia. Reports say al Qaeda has posted pictures of Johnson's severed head on its website.
"As we promised the mujahideen, we have beheaded the American hostage Paul Marshall after the deadline that the mujahideen gave to the tyrannical Saudi government passed," a statement signed by the Organization of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said on al Islah website.
Johnson's captors had promised to execute him by Friday unless the Saudi government frees jailed militants.
"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 U.S before news of Johnson's demise.
"When I see pictures of my husband, I hurt so much, I fall to the floor," Johnson's Thai wife Thanom said in broken English. "He is sick man, he need medicine. He hasn't done anything wrong."
A team of 20 FBI agents specializing in hostage rescue and negotiations had been working alongside the Saudis, according to a senior Saudi official in Washington.
"More than 1,200 Saudi homes have been searched as of Thursday night. The searches continue," Reuters quoted the official as saying.
More than 150,000 Saudi officers and security forces had been going door-to-door searching throughout Riyadh for Johnson over the past two days, he said.
Meanwhile, prominent Saudi cleric Sheikh Saleh bin Abdullah al-Humaid, in a sermond 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, Reuters reports.
"Killing a soul without justification is one of the gravest sins under Islam, it is as bad as polytheism," the cleric said. "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.
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