Image Source: ABC News

BY JIM FLINK

ANCHOR CHRISTINA HARTMAN

Al Qaeda has issued its demands for the release of an American aid worker abducted four months ago in Pakistan.
Warren Weinstein was abducted from his bed in Lahore, Pakistan.
Now, in a taped message, al Qaeda says they have him -- and will release him -- under certain conditions. CBS news reports...

“....al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri said Warren Weinstein would be released if the United States stopped airstrikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. He also demanded the release of all al Qaeda and Taliban suspects around the world.”

al-Zawahri also issued a message to all militants held in the west.
According to the National Journal, he said...

"I tell the captive soldiers of al-Qaida and the Taliban and our female prisoners held in the prisons of the crusaders and their collaborators, we have not forgotten you and in order to free you we have taken hostage the Jewish American Warren Weinstein."

It’s the first confirmation of Weinsteins’ whereabouts.  He was abducted just days before he was to return home, and toward the end of Ramaddan.
The Christian Science Monitor notes...

“The case quickly went cold, with an unusually long period of silence until Mr. Zawahiri’s message. During that time, Mr. Weinstein may have been passed up a chain of criminal and terrorist outfits before winding up with Al Qaeda.”

But ABC notes, U.S. officials told the news organization, they believed Weinstein had fallen into al Qaeda’s hands. In part, because of evidence found during the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound.

"The documents from bin Laden's hideout show his frustrated deputies were considering kidnapping and other criminal enterprises as a means of striking for their weakened state ...It's entirely possible that al Qaeda or one of its militant allies may be holding Mr. Weinstein,"and the statement by Zawahiri supports this conclusion. The U.S. government is following every lead to help find Mr. Weinstein."
 

Transcript by Newsy.