The Alleged Osama Bin Laden Tape

Osama Bin Laden 

April 24,2006

New threats, New Tape?

Osama bin Laden issued more threats in a new tape released by Al-Jazeera that is allegedly from the al-Qaida leader. (April 24)


On Tape, Bin Laden Warns of Long War
He Accuses the West Of Acting as 'Crusader'

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 24, 2006

BERLIN, April 23 -- Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden urged his followers to prepare for a drawn-out conflict with the Western world in a new audiotape broadcast Sunday, blaming what he called "a Crusader-Zionist war" for a long list of attacks on Islam in places from Darfur to Denmark.

"Your aircraft and tanks are destroying houses over the heads of our kinfolk and children in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Pakistan. Meanwhile, you smile in our faces, saying: 'We are not hostile to Islam; we are hostile to terrorists,' " bin Laden said, according to excerpts of the audiotape attributed to him and broadcast by the al-Jazeera network.

It was the first time bin Laden had been heard from since Jan. 19, when he offered "a long-term truce" if the United States and its allies withdrew their forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and allowed Islamic fundamentalists to rebuild those countries instead.

Before that, the 49-year-old Saudi had been publicly silent for more than a year. His face has not been seen since he appeared in a video recording broadcast a few days before the 2004 U.S. presidential election.

Intelligence sources said they believe he is hiding in Pakistan, despite a global manhunt and a $25 million reward for his capture posted shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In the new remarks, bin Laden complained about Western interference in shattered Muslim regions around the world. He urged Muslims to go to the war-torn Darfur region of western Sudan to fight international peacekeepers, saying their real mission was "to occupy the region and steal its oil under the cover of maintaining security there," according to a translation of the audiotape by the BBC.

The United States and other Western countries are supporting a plan to send U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur, where Arab militiamen backed by the Sudanese government are fighting rebel groups. Both sides are Muslim. Tens of thousands of people have died in the conflict, and 2 million have been displaced.

He also referred to the strife in the Russian republic of Chechnya and to the lawless country of Somalia.

"What is the meaning of the silence over the horrible Russian crimes in Chechnya and the lynching of Muslims and tearing apart of their bodies? What does the humiliation of Muslims in Somalia and the killing of 13,000 of our brother Muslims there mean?" bin Laden said. He did not elaborate on the reference to the deaths in Somalia.

He cited decisions by the United States and European nations to cut off aid to Palestinians after the recent legislative election victory by the militant group Hamas, formally known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, as evidence of a Christian-Jewish conspiracy against Muslims.

"They are determined to continue with their Crusader campaigns against our nation, to occupy our countries, to plunder our resources and to enslave us," he said.

Al-Jazeera did not divulge how it obtained the tape, and it was unclear when it was recorded. But it appears to have been made in the past five weeks because bin Laden referred to a raid by Israeli forces on a Palestinian prison in Jericho on March 14.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said U.S. intelligence officials believe the tape is authentic. "The al-Qaeda leadership is on the run and under a lot of pressure," McClellan told reporters traveling with President Bush in California. "We are continuing to take the fight to the enemy abroad and making it difficult for them to plan and plot against Americans."

Counterterrorism analysts said bin Laden was trying to portray himself as a champion of oppressed Muslims around the world, even though al-Qaeda has avoided involvement in many of the conflicts that he has decried. For example, bin Laden has largely ignored events in Sudan since he and his network were expelled from the country a decade ago. Similarly, al-Qaeda has no record of activity in the Palestinian territories.

"Bin Laden is a master craftsman at recognizing issues and knowing how to exploit these issues for his own purposes," said M.J. Gohel, a London-based analyst and chief executive of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a security policy group. "He's trying to enlarge the global conflict and is trying to incite and anger the Muslim world against the West."

Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism specialist and director of the Washington office of the Rand Corp., a California-based research group, said al-Qaeda is confronting the same challenge that all terrorism networks face: how to remain relevant as a radical movement over time.

"It's entirely cynical," he said of bin Laden's rallying cry on behalf of Darfur and Hamas. "He's got to say something about someplace. They've got to keep talking or else they're going to be irrelevant, especially when they're not directly involved in the fighting."

"These are contentious contemporary issues that he can glom onto and milk for his own ends," Hoffman added. "It's more rhetorical than factual. Bin Laden is no friend of the Sudanese. They told him to leave in 1996 and took his money. And Hamas has basically told al-Qaeda to mind its own business."

Counterterrorism officials and analysts said al-Qaeda's leaders have also become more outspoken in recent months because they fear losing their influence in the fragmented world of Islamic fundamentalism. Bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian physician, have been effectively sidelined since the Sept. 11 attacks while other radical groups and figures, such as Hamas and Jordanian fighter Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, have stolen the limelight, the analysts said.

Zawahiri, for instance, has issued a dozen audio and video recordings in the past year, attempting, as bin Laden has, to insert al-Qaeda into a host of regional conflicts and urging Muslims to boycott elections in Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Although Zawahiri has frequently shown his face on television, bin Laden has not appeared in a video since October 2004. Terrorism analysts and Islamic fundamentalist leaders are divided as to why. Some speculated that bin Laden may have been injured or could have altered his appearance to avoid detection. Others said bin Laden fully reveals himself only on special occasions for maximum effect, such as his cameo days before the U.S. presidential election.

Despite being on the run, bin Laden and Zawahiri have both devised a reliable and secure system for distributing messages to a global audience that intelligence agencies have failed to trace.

Appearing Sunday on Fox News, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, said bin Laden's most recent tape was part of al-Qaeda's "ongoing and very sophisticated communications effort" and that the terrorists realize much of today's fighting "is about winning the hearts and minds of moderate Islam, and they are focused on that."

Hoekstra said his committee was planning hearings on al-Qaeda's Internet activities shortly after Congress returns from its Easter recess. "They use the right words," Hoekstra said. "They use instantaneous response. They are quick in getting new messages up on the net."


New Al-Zarqawi video Slams West

April 25, 2006

Al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi accuses the West and the United States of waging a 'crusader' war against Islam in a new videotape posted on the Internet. (April 25)


This is an image made from video originally posted Tuesday, April 25, 2006 on the Internet showing al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, center right, unmasked. In the rare video, al-Zarqawi accused the West and the United States of waging a "crusader" war against Islam but said Muslim holy warriors were standing firm. This image was provided via the IntelCenter, which is a private contractor working for intelligence agencies. (AP Photo/via IntelCenter)
 

al-Qaida in Iraq Leader Mocks U.S. Forces

April 25, 2006

The Associated Press

By SALAH NASRAWI

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — In a rare video posted Tuesday on the Internet, al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden and said any government formed in Iraq would be merely a "stooge."

He also mocked the U.S. military in Iraq for what he called suicides, drug-taking and mutinies, and he warned that "worse" attacks were to come.

The video, released just days after Iraq named a new prime minister and a high-profile audiotape from bin Laden appeared on Arab TV, seemed a deliberate attempt by al-Zarqawi to claim the spotlight again following months of taking a lower profile.

It also came just one day after a triple bombing at a resort in Egypt that killed at least 24 people, including 21 Egyptians and three foreigners.

The video was believed the first to show al-Zarqawi's face. The bearded, black-clothed terrorist leader, thought to be about 40, was in a flat desert landscape, dotted with scrub brush as if after a spring rain, that looked startlingly like Iraq's western Anbar province.

The footage showed him and about two dozen insurgents, masked and dressed in black uniforms, undergoing combat training.

In another scene, al-Zarqawi was filmed inside, sitting with his lieutenants and Anbar's insurgent commander, according to a caption in the video. The men, sitting on traditional Arab cushions and mats, could be seen discussing strategy over a large map spread on the ground.

"Any government which is formed in Iraq now —whether by Shiites or Zionist Kurds, or those who are dubbed Sunnis — would only be a stooge," al-Zarqawi said in the video. "They are a poisoned dagger in the heart of the Muslim nation."

It has been just days since Iraq named a new prime minister and made progress toward forming a new government. In that sense, the video could be an attempt by the terrorist leader to raise his visibility at a time when U.S. officials are hailing the Iraqi political process as a setback to the insurgents.

Al-Zarqawi also claimed the U.S. military was overwhelmed in Iraq.

"Why don't you tell people that your soldiers are committing suicide, taking drugs and hallucination pills to make them sleep?" he asked, directing his words to President Bush.

"By God, your dreams will be defeated by our blood and by our bodies. What is coming is even worse," he said.

The U.S. military in Iraq said it would have no immediate comment.

A U.S. counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in compliance with office policy, said intelligence officials are conducting a technical analysis to determine the tape's authenticity. The official said it appears to be al-Zarqawi.

Al-Zarqawi has done numerous audio tapes, including one in January, but this is his first video in some time, perhaps several years, the official said, adding that he appears to be healthy. Producing a video, rather than a voice recording, is thought to increase the risk to the speaker.

His message indicates the video was made in part to display unity among the foreign fighters in Iraq, and bring more members into the organization, the official said.

The video was posted on a Web site that al-Zarqawi's group and others have used to post Internet messages. Al-Zarqawi previously has made statements only through audiotapes posted on the Web, although photos of him obtained by the U.S. government have been widely circulated.

In one part of the video, al-Zarqawi sat dressed in black and with a black skullcap on his head, with an ammunition vest hung from his neck and an automatic rifle propped against the wall to his right. The black flag of his group, al-Qaida in Iraq, was superimposed on the screen.

In the video, al-Zarqawi also accused the West and the United States of waging a "crusader" war against Islam but said Muslim holy warriors were standing firm.

"When the enemy entered into Iraq, their aim was to control the area and support the Zionist state," al-Zarqawi said. "But here we have been fighting them for the last three years."

He also mentioned Jerusalem, saying that while fighters are in Iraq, "our eyes are on Jerusalem, which cannot be regained without a guiding Quran and a triumphant sword."

And he repeated his allegiance to bin Laden, calling him his emir or prince.

"Our emir, sheik Osama bin Laden, has offered you a truce, which was good for you if you had accepted. But you turned it down, because of your arrogance," al-Zarqawi said, referring to an offer al-Qaida's chief made two years ago to cease attacks on Europe if the U.S. would withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The bin Laden tape that was played on Arab television Sunday encouraged Muslims to support his group in its war with the West.

Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, has claimed responsibility for some of the most high-profile suicide bombings in Iraq, and also for a score of other attacks including hotel bombings in November in Jordan.

But in recent months, al-Zarqawi had sharply lowered his profile, halting his group's Internet claims and joining a clearinghouse group of other radical groups. Some other radical leaders had said he had been shunted aside and told to lower his profile.

In January, al-Zarqawi's group said in a Web statement that it had joined five other Iraqi insurgent groups to form the Mujahedeen Shura Council, or Consultative Council of Holy Warriors. Since then, al-Zarqawi's group had stopped issuing its own statements, a sharp contrast to its previous frequent postings, and al-Zarqawi had not issued a Web audiotape since January.

In the video posted Tuesday, the logo of the Shura Council appeared on the screen as al-Zarqawi spoke, even as the black flag of his specific group, al-Qaida in Iraq, appeared in the corner.

Among other attacks he has been blamed for, U.S. officials believe al-Zarqawi personally beheaded American businessman Nicholas Berg, whose savage killing was shown on a videotape distributed by al-Qaida in Iraq in May 2004.

It was the first of a series of videotaped decapitations of Westerners in Iraq, which ended after widespread complaints from Muslims who were sympathetic to the insurgency but objected to the video beheadings.

Some experts have long cautioned, however, that al-Zarqawi's role may have been exaggerated and that some of the attacks claimed by his group — or that U.S. and Iraqi officials blamed on him — may have been carried out by others.

Iraq's insurgency has always been made up of several disparate groups, and some of them, including Ansar al-Sunnah Army and the Islamic Army of Iraq, have been nearly as violent as al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq.

Al-Zarqawi has seized most of the attention because of his relentless Internet propaganda efforts, the brutality of his attacks — including the hostage beheading videos — and a series of suicide car bombings that targeted mostly Shiites.


Qaeda steps up jihad call with messages from top leaders



A poster distributed by the US army in February 2004 shows the image of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and two of his deputies have stepped up their calls for jihad, or holy war, with an unprecedented series of messages over the past week.(AFP/File)  

April 30, 2006

New Zawahri video claim

AFP

PARIS (AFP) - Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and two of his deputies have stepped up their calls for jihad, or holy war, with an unprecedented series of messages over the past week

"It all indicates there is an urgent call to jihad: Bin Laden exhorts his partisans to target those who insult Islam, Zarqawi warns the Sunnis against taking part in the political process in Iraq, Zawahiri is inciting the Pakistanis to overthrow Musharraf," said Yasser al-Serri, director of the London-based Islamic Observatory.

In a video posted on a jihadist website on Saturday, Al-Qaeda's number two Ayman al-Zawahiri called on the people and army of Pakistan to fight the regime of President Pervez Musharraf.

Zawahiri has become Al-Qaeda's most senior spokesman in videos released in recent months, as bin Laden had remained out of the public eye.

Pakistan has caught a number of senior Al-Qaeda figures including alleged September 11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was arrested in Rawalpindi in 2003.

Zawahiri also said Al-Qaeda was victorious in Iraq adding that it has carried out 800 suicide attacks over the past three years.

Four days before, Al-Qaeda's chief in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi vowed to chase US forces out of the war-torn country in a rare video appearance posted on the Internet.

According to the White House, Zarqawi's video was a sign that his radical Islamic group was failing to stoke Iraq's insurgency.

And on April 23 bin Laden called on Muslims to take up arms against foreign peacekeepers who may be deployed in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, according to an audiotape broadcast on Arab satellite news channel Al-Jazeera.

Serri, whose organisation defends Islamist movements, said that in addition to the focus on Sudan another new element in bin Laden's message was his naming of specific targets in his native Saudi Arabia.

Bin Laden called for the murder of Saudi Labour Minister Ghazi al-Gosaibi, a protege of King Abdullah who has cracked down on Islamist websites and publications in the kingdom.

Mohammed Massari, a Saudi dissident based in London, said that the timing of the bin Laden and Zawahiri statements indicated some level of coordination between the two even though they may not be in the same place.

"As for the Zarqawi video, I think it is a coincidence, even though his warnings appear to be well-timed," he said.

"The United States cannot tolerate Iran's influence in Iraq, so it is pressuring the Shiites and pushing the Sunnis to take part in the political process. So it is normal for Zarqawi to break his silence to warn the Sunnis not to be fooled."

Massari said the "intensive and parallel calls for jihad may lead to operations anywhere in the world especially in the Gulf, mainly Saudi Arabia and also in the Palestinian territories, in the Horn of Africa and maybe Algeria".


Watch out Zarqawi warns U.S. Video


May 4 - The U.S. military says it's close to capturing the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
They made the claim after discovering documents and the unedited copy of a video he released last week.
Zarqawi was throwing all his resources into attacks in Baghdad and was probably somewhere close to the capital, U.S. military spokesman Major-General Rick Lynch told a news conference.
Sonia Legg reports.

SOUNDBITE: Resident of Aziziya neighbourhood, saying (Arabic):
''A missile hit a house where 20 people lived, killing all of them including children.''

SOUNDBITE: U.S. Military spokesman Major-General Rick Lynch, saying (English):
''Here's Zarqawi the ultimate warrior trying to shoot his machinegun. It's supposed to be automatic fire, he's shooting single shots.''

SOUNDBITE: U.S. Military spokesman Major-General Rick Lynch, saying (English):
''The person who has the most to lose in the formation of a government of national unity is Zarqawi. He's been told by his leadership that democracy equals failure for Zarqawi and al Qaeda in Iraq.''

US Releases Zarqawi Video Out-takes


Noted:

It should be noted that only those in the West who is Pro-Israel and against anything Islam call these people "Insurgents." The word insurgent is not used in the Middle East, these people are called "Mujahideen," or "Resistance fighter's."

Americans for example in Iraq are considered invaders to undermine the Iraqi people and create a puppet version U.S. government in the East. So you have a resistance to what is considered an invasionary threat.

O you who believe! When you meet those who disbelieve, in a battle-field, never turn your backs to them.( سورة الأنفال , Al-Anfal, 8:15)
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُواْ إِذَا لَقِيتُمُ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ زَحْفاً فَلاَ تُوَلُّوهُمُ الأَدْبَارَ