Osama warns US against executing 9/11 mastermind

Dubai, June 15 (IANS/AKI) Dreaded terrorist Osama Bin Laden has warned US against executing 9/11 terror attack mastermind and other Al Qaeda prisoners, saying the outfit will kill any American it has taken hostage.

“The day America takes this decision, it will have made a decision to execute whoever is taken captive by us,” bin Laden said in a 90-second audio message posted to jihadist websites.

The message, which has not been authenticated, also warned US president Barack Obama against escalating military operation in Afghanistan, backing Israel against the Palestinians, and “oppressing” the Arab and Muslim world.

“Your friend in the White House is continuing to behave badly on many important questions,” the message says in an apparent address to the American people.

“He has stepped up military operations in Afghanistan and continued to keep our prisoners in its prisons such as our hero Khalid Sheikh Muhammad.”

Khalid Sheikh has been facing trial in the US for plotting terror attack on New York’s World Trade Centre Sep 11, 2001.

“If the US executes him, we will kill our American prisoner,” the message said, in an apparent reference to a US soldier kidnapped in Aghanistan last year.

Taliban insurgents in June last year captured American soldier Bower Berghdahl in Afghanistan. The militants have released several videos of the soldier appealing to his family and fellow Americans to urge the US government to pull out its troops from the war-wracked country.

The message also carries a threat of a major terror attack in the US similar to 9/11, in which 3,000 people were killed.

“The US will be hit again as it was on September 11. Justice calls for an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and this makes warfare inevitable,” it said.

–IANS/AKI