Bin Laden calls Muslims to fight in Sudan
April 24, 2006 (DUBAI) — Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has called on Muslim fighters to go to Sudan to wage war against “crusader thieves,” according to a new audiotape attributed to him.
He also slammed the Darfur conflict and the international isolation of Hamas-led Palestinian government as proof of a “war by crusaders and Zionists against Islam” in the tape broadcast by Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television Sunday.
It was the first purported recording by the Western world’s most wanted man in three months but its authenticity could not be verified and it was not clear when it was made.
In the last audiotape attributed to bin Laden in January, he threatened new attacks against the United States but also offered the American people a conditional “truce”.
That tape marked the first time bin Laden had been heard from in more than a year but there is still no information about the whereabouts of the man behind the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and a host of other terror strikes.
In Sunday’s tape, he called upon Muslim fighters to prepare for a prolonged war in Darfur, in his first reference in the media to Sudan, his base before he fled to the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in the late 1990s.
“I call upon the mujahedeen (holy warriors) and their supporters in Sudan and its surroundings — including the Arabian Peninsula — to prepare to lead a prolonged war against the crusader robbers in western Sudan,” he said.
About 300,000 people have been killed and more than two million forced from their homes in Darfur since 2003 in fighting between rebels and militias backed by government forces. The crisis is one of the continent’s worst humanitarian tragedies.
“Our aim is clear, which is to defend Islam, as well as its land and people, and not to defend the government of Khartoum, even if we share common interests,” he added, in reference to the Islamist government that has been in power since a 1989 coup.
The African Union is currently engaged in a diplomatic effort to bring peace to Darfur and has deployed a 7,000-strong force there. But the mission has been plagued with financial problems.
Bin Laden also criticised the Western isolation of Hamas since it took power in the Palestinian territories last month, leading to a cut in vital aid from donors such as the United States and the European Union.
“Their rejection of Hamas after it had won the election …confirms that there is a Crusader-Zionist war against Muslims,” he said.
Bin Laden also urged Muslims to boycott products of Western countries, including the United States, which backed Denmark following the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, Al-Jazeera said.
The cartoons, including one showing the prophet with a bomb-shaped turban, sparked violent protests by Muslims worldwide earlier this year after they appeared in Danish and other European newspapers.
Al-Jazeera said he also called for the cartoonists behind the offending caricatures to be handed over to Al-Qaeda “to put them on trial.”
The tape was only the third since December 2004, when the Saudi-born bin Laden militant had anointed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraq’s most wanted man, as Al-Qaeda’s leader in the war-torn country.
Bin Laden’s last video appearance was on December 16, 2004 when he also called on his fighters to strike Gulf oil supplies and warned Saudi leaders they risked a popular uprising.
(ST/)