Hostage pleads with Barack Obama

A US aid worker abducted by al-Qa'ida in Pakistan last year has pleaded with President Barack Obama to meet his captors' demands for the release of prisoners to save his life.

Warren Weinstein, 70, appealed to Mr Obama to "accept and respond to the mujahedin", in a short video posted on an Islamist website by the media arm of al-Qa'ida. Mr Weinstein was kidnapped in Lahore last August.

"My life is in your hands, Mr President," he says, according to a US monitoring group, Site intelligence.

Reuters