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“We
must use shock weapons against the enemy”
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KUWAIT
CITY, December 8 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Sulaiman Abu
Ghaith, a leading Al-Qaeda spokesman who has been stripped of his
Kuwaiti nationality, resurfaced Sunday, December 8, threatening more
attacks.
The
former Kuwaiti school-teacher and mosque imam also made a fresh claim
of responsibility for last month’s attacks in Kenya which killed 13
people, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
“The
two Mombasa attacks are the work of Al-Qaeda,” Abu Ghaith said in a
voice recording posted on the jehadonline.org website.
“The
Crusader-Jewish alliance will no longer be immune from attack
anywhere,” Abu Ghaith warned.
“We
are going to strike at its vital installations and strategic interests
with all means at our disposal,” he said, calling on Al-Qaeda
fighters to “prepare themselves seriously for the next phase which
will be bigger and more serious.”
Three
Israelis and 10 Kenyans were killed when three bombers struck a resort
hotel near the port city of Mombasa on November 28, shortly after a
failed missile attack on an Israeli jetliner packed with returning
holidaymakers.
“We
must use shock weapons against the enemy, by mounting lightning
well-targeted operations against him everywhere in the world so that
he feels danger, insecurity and instability on land, at sea and in the
air,” the Al-Qaeda spokesman said.
The
Al-Qaeda spokesman said the movement was taking the new step of
formally claiming responsibility for the twin attacks because it had
succeeded in regrouping in the face of the U.S.-led campaign against
it that followed the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
“The
nature of our activity stopped us from claiming our jihad operations
against the Crusader alliance in the previous phase, but now we find
ourselves in better circumstances which allow us to do so,” said Abu
Ghaith.
Al-Qaeda
experts had cast doubt on an earlier claim of responsibility for the
Mombasa attacks carried by jehadonline.org and another Islamic
website, islammemo.com, on December 2, noting that the organization
had previously limited itself to welcoming the operations of its
militants.
“Al-Qaeda
has never directly claimed responsibility for operations carried out
by its militants, making do with hailing the attacks,” one analyst
told AFP at the time, although he accepted that the new statement
might presage a change of tactics by the organization.
In
Sunday’s statement, the Al-Qaeda spokesman, who was stripped of his
Kuwaiti nationality in 2001, singled out growing U.S. war preparations
against Iraq as a particular target for the group’s operations.
“The
danger of what America and its allies are preparing against Iraq and
its people is not limited to overthrowing the infidel regime and its
dictator but is aimed at ... Balkanizing this great country, pillaging
its wealth and occupying a vital part of our Arab world,” said Abu
Ghaith.
He
charged that the allies’ ultimate goal was to fulfill the hard-line
Zionist “dream of a greater Israel stretching from the Nile to the
Euphrates.”
U.S.
intelligence has waged a no-holds-barred war against Islamic websites
suspected of links to Al-Qaeda for fear they are being used to send
out orders to the group’s operatives around the world.
The
one long regarded as the most reliable - drasat.com - has been shut
down as have two others which, like jehadonline and islammemo, have
posted statements attributed to Al-Qaeda - alneda.com and azzam.com.
The
result has been occasional uncertainty about the authenticity of the
statements that they carry.
Two
days after Al-Qaeda's earlier claim of responsibility for the Mombasa
attacks, U.S. President George W. Bush said: “I believe Al-Qaeda was
involved in the African bombings,” although his spokesman Ari
Fleischer later clarified that he had not meant he was certain.
Since
the United States launched its war on terror in Afghanistan, Abu
Ghaith has made numerous televised appearances, spouting defiance
against the United States and threatening terror attacks.
Like
Osama bin Laden, Abu Ghaith’s whereabouts remain a mystery. Last
April, a senior security source told a Kuwaiti newspaper he was
“alive and kicking” and “moving around in disguise” on the
Iranian-Afghan borders after fleeing U.S. raids on Afghanistan.
Abu
Ghaith was stripped of his Kuwaiti nationality last October because of
links to the September 11 terror attacks on the United States.
“I
don’t regret in any way losing my Kuwaiti nationality, even if they
stripped 1,000 nationalities from me, I would still continue a Jihad,
even if Bin Laden died,” Abu Ghaith told a Kuwaiti newspaper through
a mediator at the time.
“The
citizens of poor countries should seek to obtain the nationality of
rich countries. But my leaving for Afghanistan was not because I was
seeking a better life but because I was keen on fighting for a holy
cause,” Abu Ghaith said.
Abu
Ghaith was born in Kuwait in 1965 and is married with six children,
one son and five daughters, his former acquaintances told AFP last
year.
He
taught Islamic studies at the Al-Asoosi School in Rumaithiya, south of
Kuwait City until June 2001. He then moved to the Ministry of Awqaf
and Islamic Affairs where he was employed as a mosque imam.
That
summer however, Abu Ghaith was fired from the ministry due to an
absence of two weeks without prior permission.
During
Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait in 1990-1991, Abu Ghaith was an active
member of Kuwait’s Muslim Brotherhood. Throughout the seven-month
occupation, he helped in the distribution of food and money to
Kuwaitis and also volunteered as a preacher during Friday prayers.
He
continued to preach after the emirate’s liberation in February 1991,
but was later suspended over his public criticism of the Kuwaiti
government.
In
1992 he broke away from the Muslim Brotherhood and formed his own
splinter group after apparently opposed the movement’s participation
in parliament, based on his belief that Kuwait’s constitution is
un-Islamic.
In
the summer of 1994, Abu Ghaith spent two months fighting with the
Muslims in Bosnia. He frequently traveled out of Kuwait concealing his
membership of Al-Qaeda.
