Member is Said to Have Bombed Tunisian Synagogue
by Howard Schneider, Washington Post
CAIRO - An audio recording purportedly from one of Osama bin Laden’s spokesmen asserts that the al Qaeda leader is alive and his organization intact enough to prepare fresh attacks against the United States.
The recording, broadcast today on the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite television network, also asserts that the bombing of a synagogue in Tunisia in April was carried out by an al Qaeda member who was angry that Jews were practicing their religion in his country while Palestinians were under siege by Israel. The attack on the island of Djerba killed 17 people, including 11 German tourists.
“Our martyrs are ready for operations against American and Jewish targets inside and outside,” said the voice on the tape. “America should be prepared. It should be ready. They should fasten the seat belts. We are coming to them where they never expected. The current American administration every once in a while releases terrorist attack warnings. I say yes, yes, yes, we are going to launch attacks against America.”
The tape was purportedly recorded by Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a Kuwaiti religious instructor who was stripped of his citizenship when he turned up as a bin Laden spokesman after the Sept. 11 attacks. It is the latest in a series of video and audio recordings that al Qaeda has released, usually through al-Jazeera, in an apparent effort to sustain a public profile even as its leaders remain in hiding.
The reference to the synagogue attack indicates that the current audiotape is of more recent vintage. However, as with the earlier recordings, this broadcast provides no direct evidence about whether bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders are alive and healthy.
Al-Jazeera said it received the tape on Saturday, the Reuters news agency reported, but it was not clear when it was recorded or from where Abu Ghaith was speaking. He has previously spoken about al Qaeda on Web sites and Middle Eastern news channels, warning that al Qaeda attacks against the United States were not over.
U.S. intelligence analysts will be able to determine “in the next day or two” whether the voice on the tape is really that of Abu Ghaith, according to a senior administration official in Washington. “We have him on tape and can compare the tapes,” he said.
In this tape, Abu Ghaith maintains that bin Laden is in good health, and will appear soon in a television broadcast.
“I really want to assure the Muslims that Sheik Osama bin Laden, with the mercy of Allah, is in good and prosperous health and all that is rumored about Sheik Osama’s sickness and injuries in Tora Bora is completely inaccurate news,” the tape says, referring to a December battle in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.
The senior U.S. official questioned why bin Laden himself does not make an audiotape to announce that he is well. Other intelligence analysts have said that bin Laden might be waiting for another successful terrorist attack before making his reappearance.
Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said on ABC News that the al-Jazeera tape “seems to be further confirmation” of the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment for the past several months that bin Laden “is still alive and probably living in those tribal territories on the western side of Pakistan.”
Abu Ghaith says on the tape that the U.S. military action in Afghanistan had not greatly impaired al Qaeda’s ability to plan operations.
“The system is still there. And it is operating at full power. Al Qaeda is not a fragile organization as some might think.”
Future operations will occur “in the time we choose and the place we choose and the method we choose. Not Dick Cheney, not the American secretary of defense, not the American president can determine the place, the method and the means that we will use.”