The Al Qaeda’s Yemen branch has published a video purporting to show an American hostage and threatened to kill him if some unspecified demands were not met. Reuters report:
In the video, the man identified himself as Luke Somers and said he had been kidnapped well over a year ago. He was looking for “any help that can get me out of this situation”.
Reuters was unable to confirm the authenticity of the video, which was posted on YouTube and social media late on Wednesday and carried by SITE, an organization that monitors militant statements.
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The man in the video says he was born in the United Kingdom and holds American citizenship.
Somers, a 33-year-old journalist, was kidnapped in Yemen’s capital Sanaa in September 2013, joining several other foreigners including Westerners held by militant Sunni Muslim armed groups in the volatile Arabian peninsula country.
In the video, a member of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the militant network’s Yemen arm, criticized the foreign policy of U.S. President Barack Obama which it said had led to deaths and “massacres,” mentioning drone strikes in Yemen and air attacks against suspected militants across the Muslim world.
