Mohammed Rasooldeen, Arab News

RIYADH, 17 June 2004 — Security forces hunted for terrorists yesterday as the deadline for an Al-Qaeda threat to kill an American hostage loomed, but there was no official word of any arrests.

Al-Qaeda has given the government until Friday to release jailed extremists or it will execute engineer Paul M. Johnson, who was kidnapped last week.

Security forces searched some western and southern districts of the capital yesterday and on Wednesday, including the Suwaidi area, a known stronghold of extremists. Security sources said no arrests had been made.

On a website, Al-Qaeda Wednesday showed Johnson, kidnapped in Riyadh on Saturday, blindfolded and sitting in a chair with one sleeve of his orange uniform ripped off.

A Saudi colleague of the American joined pleas from his family for the release of the captive yesterday saying his abductors would violate Islam if they carry out their threat to kill him.

“I declare that I pledged to protect this man,” Saad Al-Mumen wrote in a letter published on many websites.

Al-Mumen says he is a colleague and close friend of Paul Johnson, 49, who worked for the US defense corporation Lockheed Martin in Riyadh.

In the letter, Al-Mumen quoted the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) as saying: “If they were granted (Muslim) protection, then either killing or taking their money or harming them is forbidden.”

Al-Mumen warns the kidnappers that if they violate the Prophet’s injunction, “I will never forgive you. I will curse you in all my prayers.”

He said in a later interview Johnson had expressed opposition to US foreign policy and an interest in converting to Islam.

Al-Mumen told Al-Arabiya he was dismayed “because (Johnson) has no relation whatsoever with the American forces.”

Johnson worked on Apache helicopters. In the tape, his captors boasted they kidnapped an engineer who “oversees the development of the... helicopter that attacks Muslims in Palestine and Afghanistan.”

Johnson’s family members in the United States and his wife in the Kingdom made a desperate plea to the captors to release him.

The son of the hostage, Paul Johnson III, urged the Kingdom to negotiate with the captors.

“I just want to ask the president of the United States and the Saudi officials to please make this happen... Bring my father home for Father’s Day,” the younger Johnson said on NBC on Wednesday.

Saudi official sources have said the Kingdom will not give in to Al-Qaeda’s demands.

Johnson’s Thai wife Thanom told Thai Embassy officials in Riyadh she wanted her husband back. “I appeal to the captors to send my husband safely back to me,” First Secretary Sawai Pidmuang quoted her as saying on Wednesday night.

US officials said their country was playing an active part in the Saudi hunt for terrorists. “We have people and resources on the ground in Saudi Arabia,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

In an interview, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said his country would help protect foreign workers in the Kingdom.

“We are doing everything we can to... find ways to protect Saudi citizens,” Powell told Al-Jazeera television.

Powell said the wave of terrorism in the Kingdom over the past year could endanger moves for democratic reforms in the Middle East as well as hopes for regional peace.

“Let’s not let bombs be the source of reform and modernization,” he added.

— Additional input from agencies