An American and an Italian held hostage by Al Qaeda were accidentally killed in a U.S. counterterrorism operation earlier this year, the White House said Thursday, in a stunning and tragic admission.
The White House also revealed that two American terror operatives were killed, but the revelation that hostages died — in an apparent drone strike — is leading to what President Obama called a “full review.”
Obama, speaking from the White House, expressed “grief and condolences” for the deaths of the hostages, American development expert Warren Weinstein and Italian national Giovanni Lo Porto.
“As president and commander-in-chief, I take full responsibility for all our counterterrorism operations — including the one that inadvertently took the lives of Warren and Giovanni,” Obama said. “”I profoundly regret what happened. On behalf of the United States government offer our deepest apologies to the families.”
The White House said both men were “accidentally killed” in the operation in January. A senior defense official told Fox News the hostages were killed in a drone strike.
“No words can fully express our regret over this terrible tragedy,” the White House said in a statement.
“The operation targeted an Al Qaeda-associated compound, where we had no reason to believe either hostage was present, located in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan,” the White House said.
The White House revealed that two Americans working with Al Qaeda were killed, as well. Ahmed Farouq, an American Al Qaeda leader, was killed in the same operation in which the hostages died. American-born Al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn was killed in January in a separate incident, according to the White House.
The White House says Farouq and Gadahn were not targeted in the operations, and the U.S. did not have specific information indicating their presence at the sites.
Weinstein, 73, was an American contractor working in Lahore, Pakistan, when he was snatched outside his home on Aug. 13, 2011, by Al Qaeda operatives. The Maryland resident and professor at State University of New York at Oswego was later seen in four “proof-of-life” videos, the most recent of which was released in December 2013. In that video, Weinstein appeared in a tan track suit with a wool cap and pleaded with the U.S. to come to his aid.
“And now, when I need my government, it seems that I have been totally abandoned and forgotten,” Weinstein says, apparently reading from a script. “I again appeal to you … to negotiate my release,” he said on the tape.
In a written statement, Weinstein’s wife, Elaine Weinstein, said “there are no words to do justice to the disappointment and heartbreak we are going through.”
“We do not yet fully understand all of the facts surrounding Warren’s death, but we do understand that the U.S. government will be conducting an independent investigation of the circumstances. We look forward to the results of that investigation,” she said. “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.”
Gadahn, 36, the first widely known American to join Al Qaeda, grew up in Orange County, Calif., in a family with Christian and Jewish roots. He converted to Islam at age 17, and began studying Islam at the Islamic Society of Orange County. Gadahn reportedly moved to Pakistan in 1998, where he married an Afghan refugee and later joined Al Qaeda.
In 2001, he cut off contact with his family in California, and in the years following the 9/11 attacks, became a prominent spokesman for the terrorist group, appearing under the name “Azzam Al-Amriki” with Al Qaeda founder and 9/11 mastermind Usama bin Laden in videos justifying and threatening further attacks.
In 2006, Gadahn was placed on the Bureau of Diplomatic Security Rewards for Justice Program list of wanted criminals and indicted by a California federal grand jury on charges of treason.
In a 2007 Internet video called “Al Qaeda Video Warning to U.S. by American Adam Gadahn,” the homegrown radical imposed a list of demands on America, including an end to all support for the “bastard state of Israel.”
“Your failure to heed our demands and the demands of reason means that you and your people will – Allah willing – experience things which will make you forget all about the horrors of September 11, Afghanistan and Iraq.”
More details that began in 2011.
Warren Weinstein Begged Obama to Save Him Four Years Before U.S. Drone Killed Him
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.”
