[Southack]

Notice that the terrorist's white garmet is completely clean, that the cloth backdrop is completely clean, and that the terrorist's hands are uncalloused.

Also, it appears to be a bicycle chain serving as handcuffs.

You don't get that clean in rural Pakistan. He's being held inside a large city by people who have NOT been trained recently in Al-Qaeda camps, would be my guess.

Also, the use of the internet for all communication suggests an urban environment. I suspect that the text of the message can be back-traced to a server within a very short distance of at least one terrorist.

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If they won't act, we will.

[Cinnamon Girl]

That is amazingly observant of you. It didn't even occur to me when I looked at that picture. But the emails did make me think they were in a populated area in order to have connectivity.

[GeronL]

if this isn't somehow fake... then whats taking so long to track them down? and what self-respectin' terrorist would keep giving us another day?

[Michael Barnes]

Also, the use of the internet for all communication suggests an urban environment

Ummm..huh? It's very easy these days to use Cell phones with a laptop, satellite comm. I was with Westinghouse for a while, we had engineers in the field that had sat phones and they passed their data during certain times (when the sat was overhead)..Maybe our resident G-men outta look at the timestamps of the e-mail (not server timestamps, but pattern of comm sent)..That could provide a clue.

[angkor]

I suspect that the text of the message can be back-traced to a server within a very short distance of at least one terrorist.

The NYT claimed Monday that the emails were coming from Hotmail, with the user name kidnapperguy@hotmail.com.

When you send email from a Hotmail account, the IP address of the host you're connecting from is included in the email header.

Unless they're covertly hacking into another computer and using that to access Hotmail, their location has already been ID'd.

These terrorists are already toast.