Al Qaeda threatens to murder hostage if religious bigot cleric not released

Guardian:

Al-Qaida's North African wing has threatened to kill a British tourist taken hostage in the Sahara unless the radical cleric and terrorism suspect Abu Qatada is released within 20 days.

The kidnapped man was among four Europeans seized in January after their convoy was ambushed near the border of Niger and Mali, where they had been after attending a Tuareg festival. The Foreign Office has not released the man's name.

Qatada, once described by a Spanish judge as "Osama bin Laden's righthand man in Europe", is being held in Britain pending deportation to his native Jordan, where in 1999 he was convicted in his absence of conspiracy to cause explosions and sentenced to life imprisonment. The charges related to bombings at the American school and the Jerusalem hotel in Jordan. He was convicted a second time in 2000 over a plot to bomb tourists.

"We demand that Britain release Sheikh Abu Qatada, who is unjustly [held], for the release of its British citizen. We give it 20 days as of the issuance of this statement," the group al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) said in a posting on an Islamist website yesterday. "When this period expires, the mujahideen will kill the British hostage."

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So her is a question for anti Bush libs. Did he ever do something like this. Do you notice that al Qaeda is not like us. We never threatened even mass murderers like KSM with something like this. Would you release the terrorist cleric knowing that doing so will only encourage more such demands and endanger more civilians who would be taken hostage? At this point the British government is refusing to submit to the demands of the terrorist.