(AKI) - In the most recent audio tape purportedly by Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader accuses some European leaders of prefering to "live under the shadow of the White House.""It is no longer a secret that (former British prime minister Tony) Blair, (British Prime Minister Gordon) Brown, (former Italian premier Silvio) Berlusconi, (former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria) Aznar and (French President Nicolas) Sarkozy and their ilk like to be under the shadow of the White House," the speaker said in Arabic. "They're not much different from many Third World leaders."
The tape was broadcast on the Al Jazeera television channel on Thursday. However on Friday morning several Islamist websites were running a complete version of the alleged speech by bin Laden translated in English, German and Pashtu. "The truth is as I said before that the events of Manhattan were in retaliation against the American-Israeli alliance's aggression against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, and I am the only one responsible for it. The Afghan people and government knew nothing about it. America knows that," the speaker said. "This is the reason why the Taliban government had asked the Americans to provide the proof that they were involved [in 9/11] before beginning their invasion of Afghanistan but they [the US] never provided any and then Europe, followed in the operation. You entered this war and US soldiers were exempted from accountability in European courts."
In another part of the tape, bin Laden accuses the Europeans of destroying the al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. "You are responsible for two injustices. The first is for having gone to war in Afghanistan without any right, after not having made any case in any tribunal," he allegedly said. "On top of that you have destroyed al-Qaeda training camps and some of our members and captured some, particularly those in Pakistan. What have the Afghans done to be involved in this war other than being Muslim and this is proof of a hateful crusade against Islam and its people."
