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Saudis hunt for captors, killers of Americans as Qaeda steps up terror war

Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 13 June 2004 1926 hrs

RIYADH : Saudi authorities on Sunday investigated the presumed kidnapping of a US aeronautics engineer after another American was killed by suspected Al-Qaeda extremists fighting to drive Westerners out of the oil-rich kingdom.

"We are still working with (Saudi) authorities to try to find him. We assume he is kidnapped, but we don't have any more information," US embassy spokesman Robert Keith told AFP.

Statements posted on Islamist websites in the name of the terror network of Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, which wants to "cleanse" the country of "infidels," took reponsibility for Saturday's murder and the first reported case of kidnapping in the Saudi capital.

"Our fighters of the Fallujah Brigade in the Arabian peninsula have kidnapped an American, a Christian, Paul M. Johnson Jr. born in 1955 and working as an aeronautics engineer," said the statement signed "Al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula."

Several photographs of the American, a copy of his work permit, driving licence and health card, according to which he was working for top US defense contractor Lockheed Martin and came from Maryland, were included.

But telephone numbers listed with the claim showed Johnson worked, possibly on a contract basis, with Advanced Electronics Company (AEC), the same Saudi firm in which the American killed here on Saturday was employed.

This was confirmed by sources in Riyadh, who named the US national killed in a drive-by shooting as Kenneth Scroggs. He was in his mid-fifties.

Company officials could not be immediately reached for comment, but a Saudi who knew both Americans described them as "extremely polite".

"They're super polite, better than the Arabs. This is a deviant, reckless minority attacking Americans," he said, requesting anonymity.

The capital's police chief said authorities were notified Saturday evening of "the disappearance of a US national after he left his office at a Riyadh company".

His car was found abandoned in east Riyadh, and security authorities were investigating the incident, he said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

The State Department in Washington had confirmed that a US citizen had been reported missing.

"We heard that an Islamic website was making a claim but we have had no direct contacts with any organizations or persons claiming responsibility. We are not releasing the individual's name," spokesman Stuart Patt said.

The Islamist website statement said Johnson worked on Apache helicopter gunships.

"These aircraft have long been used by the Americans, their Zionist allies and the apostates to kill Muslims ... in Palestine, in Afghanistan and in Iraq," said the statement, which bore the hallmarks of Al-Qaeda.

The group also claimed responsibility for the murder of "another American" in the same central area of Riyadh where it said the kidnapping took place.

The killing and presumed abduction were the latest in a string of attacks on Westerners by suspected Islamist extremists since early May.

On Tuesday, another American who worked for Vinnell Corp, which helps train the Saudi National Guard, was shot dead at his home in Riyadh.

Another Islamist website posted video footage, attributed to an Al-Qaeda terror cell, claiming responsibility for that killing.

The video described the victim as "American Jew Robert Jacobs, who worked for the spy group Vinnell".

Qatar's Al-Jazeera television Sunday aired scenes from the video, in which the body of a Western-dressed man is seen hitting the ground as several gunshots ring out.

An Irish cameraman was shot dead and a BBC journalist critically wounded in another attack in the Saudi capital on June 6, just a week after a shooting and hostage-taking rampage in the eastern oil city of Al-Khobar left 22 people dead, including four Westerners.

Six Westerners -- two Americans, two Britons, an Australian and a Canadian -- were killed when gunmen went on a shooting spree at a petrochemical plant in the Red Sea industrial port of Yanbu on May 1.

On May 22, a German national working in the catering department of the Saudi national carrier was shot dead in Riyadh.

On June 2, an American serviceman who also helps train the Saudi National Guard was slightly injured in another shooting incident outside Riyadh.

Western residents of Saudi Arabia, deeply alarmed by the attacks, are increasingly thinking of leaving, and some are not renewing work contracts, expatriates and diplomats told AFP this week.

Many expatriates no longer dare go out of their homes or compounds, and are restricting their movements to traveling to and from their workplaces.

The US embassy on Saturday night called again on American residents to leave.

The attacks have escalated despite a massive crackdown on suspected Al-Qaeda sympathizers, which has netted hundreds of militants, since a wave of suicide bombings began in May 2003.

Around 90 people have been killed and hundreds have been injured in the 13-month-long campaign of violence.

- AFP

Copyright © 2004 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.

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