04 June 2009

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden said US President Barack Obama had planted the seeds of "revenge and hatred" toward the US in the Muslim world and warned Americans to prepare for the consequences. Bin Laden's remarks, aired Wednesday by Al-Jazeera television, came the same day that Al-Qaeda announced it had killed a British hostage, and a day after comments by bin Ladin's deputy who described Obama as a criminal and warned Muslims not to fall for his polished words.

Their statements marked a concerted Al-Qaeda propaganda drive to pre-empt a major speech to the Muslim world that Obama is due to deliver in Egypt on Thursday.

"Obama and his administration have planted seeds for hatred and revenge against America," the Saudi-born bin Laden said in the audio recording.

Bin Laden said Obama was treading in the footsteps of his predecessor George W. Bush.

"Let the American people prepare to continue to reap what has been planted by the heads of the White House in the coming years and decades," bin Laden said.

Obama's policies in Pakistan had raised "animosity" among Muslims, he said.

In a separate development Wednesday, Al-Qaeda's North African wing said it had carried out its threat to kill a British hostage it was holding in the Sahara.

Britain said it had reason to believe the hostage, Edwin Dyer, had been killed and Prime Minister Gordon Brown condemned the killing as "a barbaric act of terrorism" and said the killers would be hunted down.

Algerian security expert Hamid Ghomrassa said the network was telling Obama he "must understand that Al-Qaeda is a force in the region that cannot be ignored."

Al-Qaeda-linked militants also killed two teachers and eight police escorts as they brought copies of tests back from an examination center near the Algerian capital, a local official and Algerian media said Wednesday.

The militants triggered a roadside bomb as the teachers returned Tuesday evening from a high-school-entry exam in the town of Timezrit, some 80 kilometers east of the capital Algiers.

The teachers' car was hit by the bomb, which also seriously wounded the vehicle's driver and the manager of Timezrit's exam center, said Ali Hadjeres, the town's deputy mayor.

The militants then fired on the two police cars escorting them, Hadjeres told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

Bin Laden's number two, Ayman al-Zawahri, lashed out at Obama Tuesday, urging Egyptians to shun him.

Himself an Egyptian, Zawahri portrayed Obama's June 4 visit to Cairo as being at the invitation of the "torturers of Egypt" and the "slaves of America."

"His bloody messages were received and are still being received by Muslims, and they will not be concealed by public relations campaigns or by farcical visits or elegant words," Zawahiri said.

The audio recording of Zawahiri's speech was embedded in a comparatively brief 11 minute, 40 second video produced by As Sahab Media, Al-Qaeda's propaganda arm, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. It was posted on jihadist web forums.

In it, he urges Egyptians to shun Obama - "that criminal who came seeking, with deception, to obtain what he failed to achieve on the ground after the mujahideen ruined the project of the Crusader America in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia."

Obama has chosen Egypt to make a promised address to the Islamic world, in which he will try to dispel resentment inflamed by US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan following Al-Qaeda's September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. He arrived in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday on the first leg of his trip.

"They [Obama's messages] will not be concealed by public relations campaigns or theatrical visits or polished words," Zawahri said.

The success of Obama's diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East, such as promoting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and halting Iran's nuclear program, may hinge on how well he is able to improve broader US relations with the Islamic world. - Reuters, AFP, AP

Copyright The Daily Star 2009.