Article Details Blueprint for Hostage-Taking

June 18, 2004 -- The self-described al Qaeda leader who was killed by Saudi security forces hours after his group beheaded an American hostage allegedly wrote an article detailing why it's important to kill hostages if the deadline is delayed.

Paul Johnson, a Lockheed-Martin radar engineer who had lived in Saudi Arabia for 10 years, was kidnapped Saturday by a group calling themselves "Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula," who said they would kill the American if al Qaeda prisoners in Saudi Arabia were not freed.

The captors made good on their threat. They announced today that they had beheaded Johnson, and posted grisly photos of the body and severed head on a Web site.

Hours after those photos were posted, the leader of the group, Abdulaziz al-Moqrin, was killed along with two other militants in a raid in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, Saudi officials and a U.S. official said.

Al-Moqrin, who was believed to head al Qaeda operations in Saudi Arabia, had threatened in a video released Tuesday that Johnson would be killed if al Qaeda prisoners in Saudi Arabia were not released within 72 hours.

ABC News has obtained an article published on the Internet two months ago, attributed to al-Moqrin, detailing the rules of hostage-taking.

"Start to kill the hostages if there is any procrastination, so that the enemy knows that we are serious about what we say, which would give the group credibility," advised the author of the chilling article.

Purpose: ‘Embarrass the Government’

Among the purposes of hostage-taking, the author of the article wrote, is to "force the government or the enemy to submit to some demands," and "to embarrass the government politically in front of the country of those who were kidnapped."

The article also advised that governments usually don't submit to kidnappers' demands, and if they do submit to one of the demands, "it is probably a trick." It is forbidden to lengthen the hostage-taking time, "because the ability of the team is then weakened and the tension increases, while the security efforts increase."

Al-Moqrin was well known to Saudi officials as a ruthless man.

"These criminals know what they're doing," said Saudi official Nair al-Jubier. "There will be no negotiations with them."