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Zawahiri speaks...
In a taped interview, a speaker purported to be Osama bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, threatens new attacks on the United States, its allies and its economy.Guess he's not that dead, dammit... The authenticity of the audiotape, obtained by Associated Press Television News on Tuesday, could not be independently confirmed. It was not known when the tape was made â though it includes references to the United States' recent standoff with Iraq and a July 1 U.S. bombing in Afghanistan. So he's alive and kicking as of the beginning of July... Al-Zawahri was said to be alive in a satellite telephone conversation reportedly intercepted over the weekend by U.S. and Afghan intelligence. The conversation was between fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and his former deputy prime minister, Maulvi Abdul Kabir, an Afghan intelligence official told The Associated Press. The report could not be confirmed by U.S. officials. Wonder if that was the same conversation where Binny's salaams were passed on? The audio interview attributed to al-Zawahri was obtained by APTN in the form of a video compact disc. On the disc, the interview is played against a video backdrop with English subtitles of the conversation, along with scenes from the Sept. 11 attacks and other news footage. A title in the video identifies the speaker as al-Zawahri and says the video is a production of the As-Sahaab Foundation for Islamic Media. The foundation is credited with earlier al-Qaida statements that appeared on Web sites and with the so-called farewell video of Ahmed Ibrahim A. Alhaznawi, a Sept. 11 hijacker. Sounds like an Arabian public service company... In Washington, U.S. intelligence was analyzing the al-Zawahri tape to determine whether it is his voice and when it was made. Presumably it could be voiceprinted against previous pronouncements. Doesn't take long, and it's not really complicated... In the recording, an unidentified person interviewed the speaker said to be al-Zawahri, who issued a warning to what he called "the deputies of America," to get out of the Muslim world, specifically Germany and France. "The mujahid youth has already sent messages to Germany and France," the speaker said. "However, if these doses are not enough, we are prepared with the help of Allah, to inject further doses." A May 8 attack on a bus in Pakistan killed 11 French engineers and an April 11 blast at a synagogue in Tunisia, a former French colony, killed 16 people, including 11 Germans. Both attacks have been linked to al-Qaida. And the snuffies who dunnit have been wiped up... "As for America itself, it should expect to be treated the same way it has acted," the man on the tape says, pointing to suffering of Muslims in Afghanistan and in the Palestinian territories. "It will have to pay the price. ... The settlement of this overburdened account will then indeed be heavy. We will also aim to continue, by permission of Allah, the destruction of the American economy." Terrible, when you have no one to blame but The speaker said the year-old U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan "has not achieved its goals. ... Neither America nor its allies have been able to harm the leadership of al-Qaida and Taliban, including Mullah Muhammad Omar and Sheik Osama bin Laden, may Allah protect them all. They are both in good health." Nobody's said Mullah Omar's dead. Where does this keep coming from? Maybe if they keep pointing out the one's alive, that'll make the other one alive, too... Asked what he saw as the motives for the United States campaign against Iraq, the man said, "Its first aim is to destroy any effective military force in the proximity of Israel." Its second aim, he said, is to consolidate the supremacy of Israel over Arab countries. "America and its deputies should know that their crimes will not go unpunished," he said. "We advise them to make a hasty retreat from Palestine, the Arabian Gulf, Afghanistan and the rest of the Muslim states, before they lose everything." Like al-Qaeda has? Atwan said he believed the recording was part of a "media campaign" by al-Qaida's leaders aimed at showing "that they are still intact, they are still powerful." They're not dead... He suggested al-Qaida's change from video to audio interviews could mean its leaders are being more careful and making it impossible for specialists to interpret any background or scenery. A background of rocks looks like rocks everywhere. A background of trees looks like trees everywhere. A corpse on video looks dead, but you can put a speech together by splicing words from a few dozen talks the corpse gave when he was alive. If you try to do the same thing with videotape, his beard will grow and shrink in the course of the speech, and people will be able to compare the video to what they've seen before. If the guy's not dead, but he's deathly ill, that won't go over really well with the followers — they'll sit down and wait until he's pegged out to see if the checks keep clearing. I'm still not convinced... Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2002-10-08 |
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