Beheaded hostage an infidel, saysal-Qaida boss

THE head of the al-Qaida cell that beheaded an American engineer justified the killing in a message written before he himself was shot dead by Saudi security forces.

In an article posted yesterday on a website used by Islamic radicals, Abdulaziz al-Moqrin called Paul M. Johnson Jnr "an infidel, a warrior of the military".

Mr Johnson, who had worked on Apache helicopters for Lockheed Martin in Saudi Arabia, "works for military aviation and he belongs to the American army, which kills, tortures and harms Muslims everywhere, which supports enemies (of Islam) in Palestine, Philippines, Kashmir," al-Moqrin wrote.