The world’s most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden, has mounted an unparalleled propaganda offensive calling for renewed attacks on the West and on American and British troops in Iraq.
The Saudi-born leader of al-Qaida has simultaneously released two audio tapes, a series of videotaped threats and several filmed statements by his group’s suicide bombers who died in an attack on Riyadh in May.
The tapes include calls by bin Laden for Muslims to rise up and expel American and British troops from Iraq and an exhortation to attack ‘Christians and Jews… who occupy Islamic lands’.
The videos, posted on a website regularly used by al-Qaeda, include undated footage of the leader in which he looks healthy and at ease. They also feature, for the first time, a statement in English, read by a suicide bomber who died in Saudi Arabia, threatening terror against the West.
The new material is a serious blow to security agencies hunting him. They fear that the tapes, which include an audio recording of the al-Qaida strike in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, last May, may presage new attacks.
In a development that is likely to embarrass the Saudi regime, a suicide bomber, calling himself Fazl bin Mohammed al-Kashmiri, claims he is the son of a retired senior officer in the Saudi intelligence service.
Among the defiant messages in the tapes posted on the internet from five militants who died in the simultaneous strikes in Riyadh that killed 20 and injured 200 in May, is one in clear English. ‘We want all Christians and Jews to go out from our Islamic countries and release our brothers from jail and stop killing Muslims or we will kill you,’ the militant said.
‘We promise we will not let you live safely and you will not see from us anything but bombs, fire, destroying homes and cutting heads. Our mujahideen are coming to you very soon to make you see what you didn’t see before.’
All the militants appear in Saudi dress, each with an automatic rifle and a map of the Arabian peninsula behind them.
Bin Laden, who is believed to be in Afghanistan, features regularly in the videos, exhorting Arabs and Muslims to martyrdom. The footage gives no clues about when it was filmed, though it appears to be relatively recent.
In an audio recording of the Riyadh attack, which targeted three foreign workers’ compounds, the bombers are heard preparing for their deaths, praying to Allah to ‘accept them into paradise’.
They travel to the site of the attack. Prolonged shooting is heard, along with car engines and alarms — then the tape ends abruptly.
The video images carry the logo of ‘Sabah Productions’, a company title that has been employed often by al-Qaida militants for propaganda films. The videos also feature commentaries by other ‘mujahideen’. Many refer to events in Iraq.
Their release will worry the security agencies who suspect that al-Qaida uses videos to send coded messages to supporters. The ability of the organisation to arrange such sophisticated propaganda — the videos are professional and polished — is also a cause for great concern.
The claim by one of the bombers that his father is a senior officer in the Mukhabarat, Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service, will further damage the increasingly fragile relationship between the kingdom and the US. American officials have long claimed that Islamic militant groups have widespread support at a high level in Saudi Arabia’s military and security forces, including those entrusted with the protection of Western residential compounds.
They are convinced the Riyadh suicide bombers had ‘insider’ knowledge of the compounds that were hit and that al-Qaida even infiltrated the elite National Guard. Several bombers were wearing National Guard uniforms when they entered the three secure complexes. But Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the UK, denied the allegations last week.
The tapes include a message directed at Omar Abdul Rachman, the blind Egyptian radical cleric in prison in America, and militants incarcerated elsewhere in the West and at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba: ‘We are proud of you and we will revenge you. We will help you, and our brothers in Chechnya and Indonesia, to defeat your enemies.’ – Guardian Unlimited Â