Last year, al-Qaeda promised to field questions from jihadis on Internet message boards. Today, Ayman al-Zawahiri responded to some of the questions. In a 90-minute audiotape message, Zawahiri justified terror attacks on the United Nations, saying the UN is an enemy of Muslims. Zawahiri also called for increased violence against Jews, inside and outside Israel. Sydney Morning Herald:
Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri launched a blistering attack on the United Nations Wednesday calling it the enemy of Islam and Muslims in an online audiofile.
"The United Nations is an enemy of Islam and Muslims: it is the one which codified and legitimized the setting up of the state of Israel and its taking over of the Muslims' lands," Zawahiri said.
The audio released via the monitoring group the IntelCenter was the first installment in a two-part series to answer about 100 questions put to Zawahiri, known as Al-Qaeda's ideological thinker, via online militant forums.
He grouped his replies into four sections -- the killing of innocents, Iran, Egypt and Palestine -- and denied that the Al-Qaeda network had been responsible for the loss of innocent Muslim lives.
"We haven't killed the innocents, not in Baghdad, nor in Morocco, nor in Algeria, nor anywhere else," Zawahiri said in the audio lasting one hour and 43 minutes, which marked his third public message this year.
"And if there is any innocent who was killed in the Mujahedeen's operations, then it was either an unintentional error, or out of necessity," he said in the audio, released by the group's media arm As-Sahab, according to IntelCenter.
"Those who kill innocents are the Americans, the Jews, the Russians and the French and their agents," he added.
Zawahiri was also asked by an Algerian medical student to justify the December suicide attacks on UN offices in Algiers in which at least 41 people, including 18 UN staffers -- three of them foreign nationals -- were killed.
But Zawahiri said those who died in Algeria were not innocent victims.
"Rather, according to the communique from the brothers in Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, they are from the Crusader unbelievers and the government troops who defend them."
Liberals cover their ears and pretend this will all go away once Bush is out of office. Chelsea Clinton thinks the world will breathe a sigh of relief once Bush is gone. As if Bush, not Zawahiri, is the one threatening to murder Jews and UN employees
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