FILE - This image made from video released anonymously to reporters in Pakistan on Thursday, Dec. 26, 2013, which is consistent with other AP reporting, shows Warren Weinstein, a 72-year-old American development worker who was kidnapped in Pakistan by al-Qaida in 2011. The White House says Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian held by the terror organization since 2012, were inadvertently killed during U.S. counterterrorism operations in a border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan in January 2015. In addition, the U.S. believes that two Americans who were working with al-Qaida were also killed. (AP Photo via AP video, File) (The Associated Press)
WASHINGTON – A 73-year-old American man who the White House says was killed during a counterterrorism operation in Pakistan was an international development worker described as passionate about his work.
President Barack Obama announced Thursday that Warren Weinstein was killed in January when the U.S. targeted an al-Qaida compound where Weinstein was held hostage.
Weinstein, of Rockville, Maryland, was a business development expert working in Pakistan on a contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development. He lived in Pakistan from 2004 until he was kidnapped in 2011. He was abducted four days before his seven-year assignment was to end.
In 2013, Weinstein appealed to Obama for help. Weinstein said in a video that he felt "totally abandoned and forgotten." It was impossible to tell whether Weinstein's statement was scripted by his captors.
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