BBC News
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– BIN LADEN WARNS FRANCE
In an audio broadcasted in the Arabic TV channel Al Jazeera, on Wednesday 10/27/2010, Osama Bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, has justified the kidnapping of five French citizens in Niger last month (see -Arlit 09.21.10), calling the abductions the result of French injustices against Muslims and warning they will continue. He called on the people of France to stop “intervening in the affairs of Muslims in North and West Africa”.
“The subject of my speech is the reason why your [Frnce] security is being threatened and your sons are being taken hostage,” he said.
“The taking of your experts in Niger as hostages, while they were being protected by your proxy [agent] there, is a reaction to the injustice you are practicing against our Muslim nation.”
“How could it be fair that you intervene in the affairs of Muslims, in North and West Africa in particular, support your proxies [agents] against us, and take a lot of our wealth in suspicious deals, while our people there suffer various forms of poverty and despair?”
Osama Bin Laden also used the latest recording to criticise France’s plan to ban the wearing of full face veils in public – a law due to be implemented next year (see – Burka-Bill). “If you unjustly thought that it is your right to prevent free Muslim women from wearing the face veil, is it not our right to expel your invading men and cut their necks?
Bin Laden urges France to withdraw from Afghanistan, calling it an unjust war – and pledged more kidnappings if his warnings are not heeded. “The equation is very clear and simple: as you kill, you will be killed; as you take others hostages, you will be taken hostages; as you waste our security we will waste you waste your security,” he said.
“It is the first time that Osama bin Laden has directly addressed the French government,” said Anne Juudichelli, a terror expert who worked at the French foreign ministry’s Middle East section for nine years, and who was in charge of the government’s “terrorism” portfolio post-The 9/11.
“One of his strategies is to try and draw a distinction between French Muslims and French people in order to put pressure on the government and obtain more in the hostage negotiations” she said in an interview to Al-Jazeera.
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