Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri warned the West it faced defeat in what he termed its "new crusade" against the Islamic world, as well as thousands of dead and economic collapse, in a videotape aired by Al-Jazeera television. "Your new crusade will end, God willing, with the same defeat as its predecessors, but only after you have suffered tens of thousands of dead and the destruction of your economy," Zawahiri said in his message to "the peoples of the West" broadcast by the Qatar-based satellite channel.In his message, which he said was to mark the third anniversary of the internment of Islamists at the US military base of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Zawahiri also hit out at US plans for reform in the Arab and Islamic worlds. The US prison camp at Guantanamo "exposes the reality of the reform and democracy that the United States claims to be trying to establish in our countries", said the voice attributed to Zawahiri but whose authenticity could not immediately be verified. He said that reform proposed by Washington would be based on the US prison camps in Cuba and in Afghanistan, as well as the Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib, where US troops' abuse of Iraqi prisoners shocked the world. It would also be based on "bombardments with fragmentation bombs and missiles, and on the installation of people like (Afghan President Hamid) Karzai and (outgoing Iraqi prime minister Iyad) Allawi," he added. "If you, people of the West, think that these cardboard governments are going to keep you safe from our reaction, you are mistaken," said the Al-Qaeda number two, who appeared in good health and spoke with an automatic weapon at each side of him.
Zawahiri, hunted by the US and believed to be hiding on the Pakistani-Afghan border, warned the West: "Your real safety lies in treating the Muslim nation on the basis of respect and ceasing aggression (against it)." The United States is currently holding hundreds of detainees from more than 20 countries in Guantanamo Bay. Most were captured in Afghanistan in autumn 2001, suspected of supporting the Taliban rulers of the country or Al-Qaeda. It was the Islamic militant leader's second message in 10 days, an audiotape having been aired by the same Qatar-based channel on February 10. That voice recording hit out at the US concept of freedom, charging that it was a cloak for spreading corruption and injustice in the Islamic world.