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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Terrorists behead American hostage



 (The Spokesman-Review)
Dave Montgomery and Warren Strobel Knight Ridder

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Security forces killed the top terrorist in Saudi Arabia on Friday, shortly after an American hostage was found beheaded, Arab news reports and officials in Washington said.

Details of how Saudi forces encountered Abdulaziz al-Moqrin, the terrorist leader, were unclear.

Al Arabiya, the Saudi-owned satellite network, said al-Moqrin and two associates were discovered as they were disposing of the body of slain hostage Paul Johnson Jr., but a senior Saudi official said al-Moqrin was killed 10 miles from where Johnson’s body was found.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said al-Moqrin and three others were killed after a massive manhunt and shootout in Riyadh’s Malaz district. He identified two of the others as brothers Faisal and Bandar al Dakheel, top lieutenants to al-Moqrin who were also on Saudi Arabia’s list of most wanted terrorists.

News of al-Moqrin’s death was celebrated as a major victory likely to throw Saudi’s terrorist network into disarray just as it seemed to be re-emerging as a major threat in Saudi Arabia.

Al-Moqrin had led al Qaeda-related terrorists only since March, but he had established a reputation as a ruthless leader who claimed credit for car bombings and terrorist assaults that have taken the lives of dozens of people.

“This is a really big deal that he’s off the streets,” said a U.S. government official who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Earlier Friday, al-Moqrin’s group, which calls itself al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, carried out its threat to kill Johnson after Saudi authorities refused to agree to a demand made Tuesday that they release hundreds of imprisoned militants.

Three photographs of a decapitated Johnson appeared on an Islamic Web site, with the warning, “For whoever comes to our country, this will be their punishment.”

“We slaughtered the American hostage Paul Johnson after the deadline we gave to the Saudi tyrants,” the statement said.

The killing brought an angry response from top U. S. officials as well as from Johnson’s family in New Jersey.

“If I had a machine gun, I’d take my friends and take care of it,” said a tearful Wayne Johnson, the victim’s brother. “I’d go over there with a machine gun and shoot them all.”

Wayne Johnson said he knew that his brother’s death was inevitable. “I knew it in my heart that they were going to do it,” he said. “He didn’t deserve it.”

President Bush called Johnson’s killers “barbaric people” and “extremist thugs” and vowed that Americans wouldn’t be intimidated.

“America will not retreat,” he said. “We must pursue these people and bring them to justice before they hurt other Americans.”

Secretary of State Colin Powell and Vice President Dick Cheney also had pledged to pursue the killers. “America will hunt these killers, find them one by one and destroy them,” Cheney said.

It wasn’t clear precisely how Johnson was killed, and the Saudi official said there were also doubts about when he was killed.

Unlike previous terrorist killings that were videotaped, Johnson’s murder was recorded only in three still photos, all of them taken after death. In one, Johnson’s body, dressed in orange coveralls, is shown lying on its side, with his head placed atop his torso and a knife blade perched across his face.

Adel al Jubeir, the foreign policy adviser to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, said at a news conference in Washington that forensic experts also were trying to determine when Johnson was killed. He said it was “possible” that his captors executed him shortly after a videotape of the blindfolded hostage was posted on the Internet on Tuesday along with a statement by al-Moqrin threatening to kill Johnson if the prisoners weren’t released.

State Department officials in Saudi Arabia repeated a three-month-old warning urging Americans to leave Saudi Arabia. “There is a good possibility that the attacks will continue,” said Carol Kalin, the press attache at the U.S. Embassy here.

Other experts agreed. “Clearly, they’ve got the Saudis on the defensive,” said Larry Johnson, a private terrorism consultant and former CIA and State Department official, by phone from Washington. “Westerners are going to continue to be targeted. There will be more beheadings. These guys are going to attempt to drive Westerners out of Saudi Arabia and ultimately destabilize the royal family.”

But al Jubeir said such warnings played into the terrorists’ hands. “We believe one of the objectives of the terrorists is to drive people out of Saudi Arabia,” he said.

Johnson, 49, a native of Eagleswood Township, N.J., was kidnapped last weekend. A videotape of the blindfolded hostage was released Tuesday along with a statement by al-Moqrin, threatening to kill Johnson if the prisoners weren’t released.

Johnson was the third American killed in Saudi Arabia in 11 days. As many as 30,000 Americans live and work in Saudi Arabia, but an undetermined number have returned home because of escalating terrorism.

As the deadline approached, pleas for Johnson’s release stretched from prayer vigils in his hometown in New Jersey to Islamic Web sites and Saudi mosques.

A number of moderate Saudi clerics addressed Johnson’s capture in their weekly Friday sermons, stressing that his mistreatment would violate Islamic teachings to treat guests with kindness, and the Saudi-owned television network Al Arabiya broadcast a tearful call for mercy from his Thai-born wife.

“I want him back,” Thanom “Nom” Johnson said in broken English.

There was never any doubt that Saudi authorities would refuse to release prisoners in return for Johnson’s life. The Saudis have arrested hundreds of suspected al Qaeda operatives and sympathizers in a yearlong crackdown on the terrorist group, including the alleged ringleaders of a series of suicide car bombings.

But Saudi officials had hoped to secure Johnson’s release with a commando-style strike similar to one used to break a 25-hour siege last month at a residential compound in Khobar. In the past, Saudi investigators have had a high success rate in tracking down militant hideouts, often with information gleaned from prisoner interrogations and confiscated documents and computer records.

More than 15,000 Saudi police and security officers fanned out across Riyadh in an attempt to find where Johnson was being held, searching hundreds of homes and concentrating heavily in the Suweidi district, a reputed stronghold of al Qaeda activity.

A small team of FBI officers reportedly was dispatched to assist in the investigation and hostage negotiation.

But U.S. and Saudi officials acknowledged privately that they had unearthed no substantial leads in their search for the missing American as Friday’s deadline neared.

Johnson had been in Saudi Arabia for more than a decade as an engineer for Lockheed Martin and was assigned to a program developing night-vision equipment for Apache helicopters used by the Saudi military. In their message on the Internet, his captors said Johnson was participating in a program to “kill Muslims.”

Johnson’s friends and supporters in Saudi Arabia said he had developed an intense interest in Muslim culture and had studied the Quran, the Islamic holy book. A Saudi who identified himself as a friend of Johnson’s posted a message on a Web site often used by al Qaeda supporters, warning that his killing would violate Islamic law.