ISLAMABAD—The captors of U.S. aid worker Warren Weinstein received $250,000 in 2012 on what turned out to be a false promise that he would be freed, according to a Pakistani intermediary who negotiated directly with al Qaeda for his release.
President Barack Obama said Thursday Mr. Weinstein, who was kidnapped in 2011 from the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, was accidently killed by a U.S. drone strike in January. The strike took place in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.
The Pakistani intermediary said $250,000 was handed over to the kidnappers in June 2012, following negotiations over Mr. Weinstein’s release.
The cash was handed over to the kidnappers in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar. The intermediary said he was unsure of the source of the money, which was in $100 bills, but described it as “private.”
A spokesman for the Weinstein family said the family had sought advice on dealing with the kidnapping from those “who deal with such issues on a regular basis.”
“Over the three and a half year period of Warren’s captivity the family made every effort to engage with those holding him or those with the power to find and rescue him,” a family spokesman said. “This is an ordinary American family and they’re not familiar with how one manages a kidnapping.”
In the weeks preceding the planned handover of the cash, a call was arranged between Mr. Weinstein and his wife, as “proof of life,” the intermediary said. Pakistani authorities even had a helicopter on standby to fly him to the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, the intermediary added. The Pakistani military didn’t return calls seeking comment.
“The money was delivered, but he [Weinstein] didn’t show up,” the intermediary said.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest declined to comment on the account of the ransom payment, saying he couldn’t confirm any details about the arrangement.
“It is the policy of the United States government not to make concessions or pay ransom to terrorists who are holding hostages,” Mr. Earnest said, articulating long-standing U.S. policy.
After the money was handed over, a different man representing the kidnappers began calling the intermediary, posing different terms for Mr. Weinstein’s release: He said he was told the kidnappers were prepared to release Mr. Weinstein as part of a prisoner exchange.
“They said [Weinstein] was a political prisoner,” the intermediary said.
According to the intermediary, the kidnappers proposed at one point to swap Mr. Weinstein for Aafia Siddiqui, a U.S.-trained Pakistani scientist who was sentenced in the U.S. in 2010 to 86 years for trying to kill U.S. soldiers and FBI agents in Afghanistan. At other times, they proposed Mr. Weinstein’s release in exchange for freeing militants in the custody of Pakistani security forces.
A spokesman for the Weinstein family said he had no information about the cash payment, the call beforehand between Mr. Weinstein and his wife, or the changing terms of the captors.
The intermediary said Mr. Weinstein had a good rapport with his captors. He already knew Urdu, Pakistan’s national language, and in captivity learned to communicate with his jailers in Pashto, the language spoken by ethnic Pashtuns who live on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier.
“They kept him well and spent a lot of money to keep him alive on medicine for the heart,” said the intermediary. “Otherwise, he would have been dead long ago.”
Mr. Weinstein, who was 73 when he was killed, suffered from heart problems and asthma.
During the negotiations, the Pakistani intermediary kept a dedicated phone the kidnappers would call, sometimes as often as every other day. The intermediary said he never called the kidnappers.
Mr. Weinstein was being held on instructions from “the boss,” or “the Arab,” the kidnappers would say, which the intermediary took to mean al Qaeda chief Ayman al Zawahiri.
The kidnappers, who claimed to be Afghans, threatened the intermediary at times. They never made any mention of the kidnapped Italian aid worker, Giovanni Lo Porto, who was killed along with Mr. Weinstein in the U.S. drone strike. It is unclear how long the two men were held in the same compound.
Around two months ago, the kidnappers spoke about handing Mr. Weinstein over to the Islamic State militant group, but then said it was too difficult to send him to Syria, the intermediary said. Islamic State, which controls parts of Syria and Iraq, is locked in a rivalry with al Qaeda. It is unclear why the kidnappers spoke about Islamic State, but Mr. Weinstein would already have been dead at that time.
Negotiations for Mr. Weinstein’s release continued well after his death. The Pakistani intermediary said the most recent contact with the kidnappers was last week, with those holding Mr. Weinstein giving no hint that their captive was dead.
“They called last week,” the intermediary said. “Why would they keep quiet about it?”
The intermediary believed that the kidnappers moved Mr. Weinstein around. They last claimed to be holding him near the city of Quetta, in the western province of Balochistan, which also borders Afghanistan.
The global U.S. drone strike campaign has been primarily focused on Pakistan’s tribal areas, which after 2001 became a refuge for al Qaeda, as well as for Pakistani and Afghan militants. While Pakistan has secretly co-operated with many of the strikes, officially Islamabad has opposed the program as a violation of Pakistani sovereignty and a cause of civilian casualties.
“The death of Mr. Weinstein and Mr. Lo Porto in a drone strike demonstrates the risk and unintended consequences of the use of this technology that Pakistan has been highlighting for a long time,” said a statement Friday from Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
—Scott Calvert and Felicia Schwartz contributed to this article.
Write to Saeed Shah at saeed.shah@wsj.com
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