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Nov recording threat { November 13 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/13/international/middleeast/13OSAM.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/13/international/middleeast/13OSAM.html
November 13, 2002
New Recording May Be Threat From bin Laden
By JAMES RISEN with NEIL MacFARQUHAR
WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 — Al Jazeera, the Arab satellite television channel, broadcast an audiotape today that it said was recorded by Osama bin Laden in which he praised several terror attacks around the world, including recent ones in Moscow and Bali, and threatened further bloodshed over Iraq.
American officials said that the voice sounded like Mr. bin Laden and that the tape could be proof that he has resurfaced. Some American officials had concluded he was dead.
Experts at the Central Intelligence Agency are studying the tape to determine its authenticity, and officials cautioned that they did not have conclusive evidence at this point that the voice was that of Mr. bin Laden.
It is possible that the tape is a fake, as others have been, officials said, but their reaction suggested that they were taking seriously the possibility that it was genuine.
If the voice does prove to be that of Mr. bin Laden, and the tape is not the product of tampering, it would provide the first proof in almost a year that he is alive. Last December, in intercepted radio transmissions from the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan, American officials believe they heard him giving orders to Qaeda fighters. His fate has been debated since then.
The tape, which Al Jazeera said was an audiocassette, contained a message about four minutes long, shaped as a warning to Western nations not to join any American-led effort against Iraq lest they suffer the kind of scattered attacks that have taken place in recent months.
Although the man speaking on the tape did not take credit for the brutal attacks, from Bali to Moscow to Tunisia, he did extol those who had carried them out as "sons who are zealous in defending their religion."
Speaking in Arabic in what sounded like Mr. bin Laden's usual level voice, his comments interspersed with pious expressions, the man said recent attacks were "merely a reciprocal reaction to what Bush, the modern-day pharaoh, did by murdering our children in Iraq and what Israel, the ally of America, did in bombing houses of the elderly, women and children in Palestine, using American planes."
The use of the word pharaoh is a heavily freighted term drawn from Koranic texts, where the lesson of the fall of the pharaoh is deemed an example of the fate of arrogant leaders who think their own power equals God's.
The man said the attacks against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, led by the United States, should have been sufficient warning to other countries that they should keep their distance from the "criminal gang" in Washington. He specifically mentioned Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Germany and Australia as nations that should pay heed.
In cadence and tone, the tape sounded like previous messages from Mr. bin Laden, the renegade son of a Saudi family with extensive construction and engineering interests.
Staff members at Al Jazeera said that the tape had arrived this evening and that journalists there were convinced it was Mr. bin Laden's voice. "It is absolutely positive that it is Osama bin Laden's voice because we have many people in the office who have met him and they said this is his voice," said Dana Sayyagh, a journalist at the station.
They would not say how the station came to get the tape.
Analyses of past audio and videotapes have been unable to conclusively establish that Mr. bin Laden was speaking, or confirm the timing to prove the tapes were newly made. One American official cautioned today that it could take time for analysts to review the tape before determining whether it is authentic and whether it was made recently.
Even with a $25 million price on Mr. bin Laden's head, American intelligence agencies have obtained little solid information about him. The failure to either kill or capture him has been a great frustration for the Bush administration.
Soon after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush declared that he wanted Mr. bin Laden "dead or alive," but after months of fruitless searching in Afghanistan and elsewhere, American officials gradually began to play down the importance of catching him. Mr. Bush and other officials began to say that Mr. bin Laden's fate had become almost irrelevant to the campaign against terrorism, because he was either dead or in hiding, and either way no longer as grave a threat to the United States as he had been.
Still, the doubts about whether he had survived American bombing raids in Afghanistan underscored the government's frustrations in trying to dismantle Al Qaeda, and the possibility that he was still at large seemed to bring the military action in Afghanistan to an incomplete end.
More troubling to American officials has been the evidence in recent weeks that Al Qaeda appears to be regrouping to launch another round of attacks against Western targets.
The sudden re-emergence of Mr. bin Laden (or someone who sounds like him) at a time when the United States is threatening war on Iraq complicates American policy.
Arab leaders have been warning since Sept. 11 that the failure of the United States to stem the Israeli-Palestinian violence would serve as the main recruiting tool for extremists, and that starting another conflict in the region would only strengthen the appeal from Mr. bin Laden for continued war against the West.
The tape seems timed to coincide with mounting anger in the Mideast over the threat of an invasion of Iraq if President Saddam Hussein does not allow renewed weapons inspections.
In the tape, several administration figures are named. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is accused of being responsible for the death of two million people in the Vietnam War. The man on the tape says both Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in their roles as leaders during the Persian Gulf war, visited more destruction on Baghdad than Halagu, the 13th-century Mongol and grandson of Genghis Khan, who sacked what was then a center of Islamic civilization.
The specific terrorist attacks that the man on the tape mentioned as a taste of things to come included the death of German tourists in a synagogue explosion in Tunisia on April 11, the attack against the French tanker in Yemen on Oct. 6, a bombing of French naval experts in Karachi on May 8, the killing of an American marine in Kuwait on Oct. 8, the Oct. 12 explosion in Bali, with its high toll of Australians and Britons, and the hostage-taking in a Moscow theater on Oct. 23.
In one of the references that showed the speaker was paying close attention to recent news, he dismissed reports that the bombing in Bali had meant to strike Americans rather than Australians. He said that despite warnings, Australia had joined American forces in Afghanistan and worked against Muslims in gaining independence for East Timor.
"But it ignored this warning until it was awakened by the echoes of explosions in Bali," he said. "Its government subsequently pretended, falsely, that its citizens were not targeted."
The man said all these operations showed that Muslims would no longer be just the victims of Western aggression, but aggressors themselves.
"For how long will fear, massacres, destruction, exile, orphanhood and widowhood be our lot, while security, stability and joy remain yours alone?" the man said, addressing the Western nations. "As you kill, you will be killed; as you raid, you will be raided."
The man also said the attempts to defend the Palestinians had pushed the whole world together in a coalition to fight Islam that was given the "false and spurious title of the war against terror."
Mr. bin Laden's previous claims that he was helping to fight for the Palestinian cause or the Iraqis suffering under sanctions have been widely dismissed by Arab governments and Muslim religious leaders, who say he has done nothing but harm their cause, but the statements carry a certain popular appeal.
While a number of key Qaeda leaders have been captured or killed, many others remain at large. A recent audiotape raised the possibility that Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Eygptian militant considered to be Mr. bin Laden's mentor and chief deputy, is also still alive. In the past, American intelligence officials have said they believed that the two usually traveled together.
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