U.S. Worker Paul Johnson Kidnapped in Saudi Arabia, Beheaded

Paul Johnson Jr., a Lockheed Martin Corp. engineer abducted in Saudi Arabia, has been beheaded, images posted on the Internet showed. The beheading was the second of an American in the Middle East in as many months.

The Associated Press, citing unidentified Saudi security officials, said Johnson's body has been found in a section of the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

Johnson, based in Orlando, was working in Saudi Arabia on Apache AH-64 helicopters for Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed. The Apache is the U.S. Army's top attack helicopter, and a message carried on an Islamist Web site alluded to the craft's use in Iraq.

''Let him (Johnson) taste something of what Muslims have long tasted from Apache helicopter fire and missiles,'' the statement said, according to AP.

Terrorists in Saudi Arabia suspected of ties to al-Qaeda have stepped up attacks on foreigners in the desert country, the world's largest oil exporter, under an ideology that seeks to expunge Western influence from the spiritual home of Islam. Al- Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is a native of Saudi Arabia, three- quarters of the Sept. 11 hijackers came from the country and Saudis are jailed at the U.S. military's anti-terrorism prison camp in Cuba.

One of the images posted to the Web showed a severed head on top of a man's body, another with a knife leaning against it. The execution itself was not depicted. Nick Berg, a Pennsylvania man who had gone to Iraq to look for reconstruction work, was beheaded in a video distributed on the Internet last month.

WARNING: GRAPHIC PHOTOS FOLLOW, DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

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