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.”
– 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.