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Bin Laden Says Attacks Retaliation for U.S. Terror
WASHINGTON,
Dec. 26 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - On a video broadcast by al-Jazeera
satellite television on Wednesday, Osama bin Laden said that the deadly
September 11 attacks were intended to put a halt to U.S. support for Israel.
The world's most wanted man is being accused for the attacks as well as the 1998
bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, in
which hundreds were killed and thousands more were injured.
"Our Terrorism against America is worthy of praise to
deter the oppressor from committing unjust acts and to stop America supporting
Israel, which is killing our children," said bin Laden, the world's most
wanted man, adding that the West loathed Islam, and that the deadly September 11
attacks were aimed at U.S. support for Israel.
Looking tired but calm, bin Laden was dressed in a clean, camouflage-patterned
combat jacket. He sat against a cloth or canvas screen, his Russian-designed
submachine gun propped beside him. There was no indication where he was when he
recorded the video.
"All that you hear about mistaken strikes is a lie and a sheer lie,"
bin Laden said. "Several days ago, they bombed as, they claimed, 'positions
of a Taliban base in Khost' and sent a missile to a mosque and said it was a
mistake."
The Pentagon had reported an errant 500-pound (230 kilogram) bomb, which struck
the mosque, was one of three dropped on a building complex in Khost, close to
Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan.
Bin Laden also condemned the United States as a nation that speaks about
humanity and freedom but that commits crimes against millions of Afghans.
Bin Laden was speaking three months after the attack against what he called,
"the international infidels and its leaders, the United States, and two
months after the beginning of the vicious aggression against Islam.''
The Associated Press translated the excerpt broadcast on Al-Jazeera in Arabic.
The chief editor of Al-Jazeera, Ibrahim Hilal, said the entire tape runs 33
minutes and will be shown on Al-Jazeera on Thursday. Only a few minutes was
shown on the Wednesday night news. The last tape of bin Laden the station aired
was on Nov. 3.
The exiled Saudi millionaire has been the focus of a manhunt by U.S. special
forces troops and Afghan militiamen, who besieged and then stormed a cave
complex near Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan, where it was initially believed
that bin Laden was hiding with several hundred al-Qaeda fighters.
Hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters, many of them foreigners, surrendered following
intense bombardment of their positions, but bin Laden's whereabouts remain
unknown.
Several people, including Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, have
speculated that he may have been killed in the U.S. bombing of the caves. Others
believed he may have slipped away, possibly crossing the border into Pakistan.
Hilal said his station received the tape "a couple days ago" by an air
courier service from Pakistan. The sender was anonymous, he said.
Bin Laden went on to accuse the West of double standards in the bombing
offensive against Afghanistan's erstwhile rulers, the Taliban, and its attacks
on bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
"When the youths detonated [bombs] in Nairobi of less than two tons,
America said that this was a terrorist strike and that this was a weapon of mass
destruction, but it has used two bombs, each weighing seven tons, and it is not
ashamed of that," bin Laden declared. "It is their right to annihilate
people as long as they are Muslims and not Americans. This is a crime of its
clearest form."
On August 7, 1998, blasts shook Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in a tightly
synchronized attack on U.S. embassies in the two cities. Bin Laden was blamed
for the attacks, which killed 224 people and wounded more than 4,000.
In Washington, the U.S. Defense Department said it was not immediately sure what
to make of the videotape.
"I don't know if it's real, if it's new, if it's old," said Richard
McGraw, a senior Pentagon spokesperson. ''Nothing that Osama bin Laden does
surprises me."
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