Riyadh will not cave in to captors of American

Saudi Arabia will not give in to al Qaeda's demands to free jailed militants to secure the release of an American the group kidnapped last week, Saudi official sources said on Wednesday.
Al Qaeda has threatened that unless Saudi authorities free the militants by Friday it will kill the hostage, engineer Paul Marshal Johnson.
"There is no way they are going to agree to their demands," Nawaf Obaid, a senior Saudi security consultant, told Reuters.
"There is no way they will release any of those militants who have been key to providing information to disrupt operations of those (militants) outside."
Saudi government foreign affairs adviser Adel al-Jubeir told CNN that his government was looking into the situation and consulting the United States on what actions to take.
"And then we will make decisions on what the next steps are but our history has been one of not negotiating with terrorists," he said.
The threat to kill Johnson, which follows a spate of suicide bombings and shootings in the past six weeks, raised the stakes in al Qaeda's war to topple the kingdom's pro-US monarchy and drive out Westerners from the world's largest oil exporter.
On a Web site, al Qaeda showed Johnson, kidnapped in the capital Riyadh on Saturday, blindfolded and sitting in a chair with one sleeve of his orange uniform ripped off showing a tattoo.
An accompanying statement said: "If the tyrants in the Saudi government want to secure the release of the American hostage, they must release our mujahideen held hostage in its jails. They have 72 hours from today (Tuesday) or else we will sacrifice him. "Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah showed no signs of compromise, saying the kingdom would strike soon against al Qaeda, led by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden.
"We have forces and until now they have not appeared but you will see them in the coming days," he said late on Tuesday.
"We can only be patient for so long and from now on you will see things that will reassure you," he said.
Mansour al-Nogaidan, a Saudi writer and former Islamist radical, said he believed Johnson would be killed and that the militants would carry on out more attacks and kidnappings.
A US State Department official said Washington would use every appropriate resource to gain Johnson's safe release but would make no concessions to the kidnappers.