Al-Qaida claimed responsibility Thursday for the kidnapping of a 70-year-old American aid worker in Pakistan in August, and issued a series of demands for his release. 
 
 In a video message posted on militant websites, al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri said Warren Weinstein would be released if the United States stopped airstrikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. He also demanded the release of all al-Qaida and Taliban suspects around the world. 
 
 "Just as the Americans detain all whom they suspect of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban, even remotely, we detained this man who is neck-deep in American aid to Pakistan since the 1970s," al-Zawahri said, according to a translation provided by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors militant messages. 
 
 Weinstein was abducted by armed men from his house in the eastern city of Lahore on Aug. 13. Police and U.S. officials have not publicly said who they believed was holding him, but Islamist militant groups were the main suspects. 
 
 Weinstein, who has a home in Rockville, Maryland, worked in Pakistan for several years and spoke Urdu. 
 
 He was the country director in Pakistan for J.E. Austin Associates, a U.S.-based firm that advises a range of Pakistani business and government sectors. The company has said Weinstein is in poor health and provided a detailed list of medications, many of them for heart problems, that it implored the kidnappers to give him. ||||| Al Qaeda sees him as an American operative, but ordinary Pakistanis saw his helping hand. 
 
 A Pakistani police officer stands guard at the house of kidnapped American development expert Warren Weinstein in Lahore, Pakistan, in August. 
 
 Al Qaeda chief Ayman al- Zawahiri announced in a recording that the terror outfit is holding hostage an American development worker abducted in August. 
 
 Unidentified gunmen nabbed Warren Weinstein from his home in Lahore, Pakistan, just days before he planned to move back to the US. The case quickly went cold, with an unusually long period of silence until Mr. Zawahiri’s message. During that time, Mr. Weinstein may have been passed up a chain of criminal and terrorist outfits before winding up with Al Qaeda. 
 
 Weinstein headed up the Pakistan office for consulting firm J.E. Austin Associates, Inc. The company was working on US Agency for International Development (USAID) projects – part of the major investment American taxpayers have made in Pakistan. 
 
 "Just as the Americans detain all whom they suspect of links to al Qaeda and the Taliban, even remotely, we detained this man who is neck-deep in American aid to Pakistan since the seventies," Zawahiri said, according to a translation from the monitoring group SITE. 
 
 In August, the Monitor spoke with several Pakistanis who had worked with Weinstein, a man in his 70s, to enhance Pakistan’s dairy and gem trades. 
 
 “I am really shocked to hear” of his kidnapping, said Ehtesham Ullah Khan, a gemologist who knew Weinstein. “He was a very nice person and, to me, he made many friends as compared to no enemies.” 
 
 Mr. Khan explained how Weinstein helped him set up scholarships for Pakistanis living in tribal areas to study the gem trade. Twenty students received US scholarships and now have jobs or have started their own businesses, he said. 
 
 Weinstein's work also included importing dairy chillers to boost the productivity of Pakistan’s milk industry. His company boasted that the dairy development work resulting in $63 million in new investment to Pakistan, at least 2,150 new jobs, and a 25 percent boost in producer productivity. 
 
 “He helped the university in the establishment of dairy facilities, negotiating with colleagues in the Netherlands,” said Dr. Muhammad Abdullah, chair of livestock at the University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences in Lahore. “We had quite a professional interaction with him.” ||||| Editor’s Note: The U.S. announced on April 23, 2015 that Weinstein was killed in a drone strike on Al Qaeda in Pakistan. 
 
 It was before dawn the morning of Aug. 13, 2011, when a group of men armed with assault rifles knocked on Warren Weinstein's front gate in the Lahore suburb of Model Town, an upscale neighborhood where Benazir Bhutto is said to have had a house. Weinstein was working as country director for J.E. Austin Associates, a consulting firm based in Arlington, Va., that contracts with the Pakistani government. The 70-year-old was helping to create small businesses in tumultuous regions in conjunction with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). 
 
 It was the beginning of more than two years in captivity for Weinstein, who was accidently killed by a U.S. drone strike in January, the Obama administration announced Thursday. 
 
 Shortly after he was taken captive, Weinstein appeared in a video and directly addressed President Obama. 
 
 “My life is in your hands," he told Obama. "If you accept the demands, I live; if you don’t accept the demands, I die,” Weinstein said, referring to a list of demands made by al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri last year that included an end to American strikes in Pakistan and the release of al Qaeda and Taliban militants detained at Guantánamo Bay. 
 
 The day he was captured, three men arrived at the front of Weinstein's house in Pakistan and offered his security guards gifts of food, a common practice among Muslims during Ramadan. At the same time, five men forced their way into the house from the back, overpowering Weinstein’s guards and gagging them. The assailants then made their way to Weinstein’s room, where they pistol-whipped him before taking him to a getaway car. 
 
 Weinstein was reportedly in the final hours of his time in Lahore and had packed his bags to leave Pakistan for good. 
 
 Weinstein had a house in Rockville, Maryland where he had lived with his wife and daughter for 35 years. Over the course of the five or six years he was working in Pakistan, Weinstein is said to have traveled back and forth to Maryland from time to time. 
 
 "We are devastated by this news and the knowledge that my husband will never safely return home," Elaine Weinstein, his wife said in a statement. "We were so hopeful that those in the U.S. and Pakistani governments with the power to take action and secure his release would have done everything possible to do so and there are no words to do justice to the disappointment and heartbreak we are going through." 
 
 Mrs. Weinstein criticized the administration that ended up killing her husband. 
 
 “Unfortunately, the assistance we received from other elements of the U.S. government was inconsistent and disappointing over the course of three and a half years. We hope that my husband’s death and the others who have faced similar tragedies in recent months will finally prompt the U.S. government to take its responsibilities seriously and establish a coordinated and consistent approach to supporting hostages and their families.” 
 
 Nevertheless, Mrs. Weinstein put the blame for her husband's death on Al Qaeda. 
 
 “But those who took Warren captive over three years ago bear ultimate responsibility. I can assure you that he would still be alive and well if they had allowed him to return home after his time abroad working to help the people of Pakistan. The cowardly actions of those who took Warren captive and ultimately to the place and time of his death are not in keeping with Islam and they will have to face their God to answer for their actions.” 
 
 After Weinstein's abductors made their escape from Lahore, they are thought to have transported their captive from safe house to safe house across Pakistan over a period of months. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the kidnapping after Weinstein's August disappearance, and Pakistani officials found themselves without a real lead for months. 
 
 In late August, Lahore police chief Malik Ahmed Raza Tahir made a hasty announcement that Pakistani police had found and freed Weinstein in the city of Khushab, but only hours later said that his statement had been incorrect. Responding to Tahir's mistake, the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad tweeted at the time that "we have no information that would confirm recovery of Warren Weinstein, but we are hoping for a positive outcome." 
 
 Al Qaeda finally declared itself responsible for the attack on Weinstein, and sources within the Taliban told reporters that over the intervening months the Pakistani branch of Al Qaeda had cooperated with Al Qaeda to secret Weinstein away to a tribal area of the country near the Afghan border. The Taliban commanders told reporters that they had kept quiet to improve their hand, a strategy that warded off pressure from Pakistani authorities and kept American officials at bay. 
 
 “Al Qaeda won’t kill Weinstein,” Mohammed Imran, a Pakistani security analyst said several years ago based on updates from militants. “It will keep him as healthy as possible in the circumstances.” 
 
 In the video, Weinstein assured his wife that he was in good health. “I'm getting all my medications, I’m being taken care of.”
– More than three months after gunmen kidnapped a 70-year-old American development worker in Pakistan, some news has finally emerged: al-Qaeda says it has Warren Weinstein, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Weinstein, who has a home in Rockville, Maryland, was captured at his residence in Lahore. In a new video, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri says he won't be released until the US stops airstrikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, and releases terror suspects, notes AP. "Just as the Americans detain all whom they suspect of links to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, even remotely, we detained this man who is neck-deep in American aid to Pakistan since the 1970s," says al-Zawahri in the video. Weinstein ran the Pakistani office of the consulting firm JE Austin Associates, which worked on USAID projects, notes the Monitor.