Agence France-Press / Times of India – 2004-10-30 10:23:06

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/904780.cms

DOHA (October 30, 2004) — Following is a translation from Arabic of the complete text of a message to the Americans by Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in which he threatens fresh attacks on the US, days before the US presidential election, as aired by Al-Jazeera TV on Friday night.

“O American people, this is what I have to say about the causes and results (of the September 11, 2001 attacks) and the way to avoid another Manhattan.

I tell you that security is a major pillar of human life. Free men do not renounce their security, irrespective of (US President George W) Bush’s claims that we hate freedom.

Let him (Bush) tell us why we did not attack Sweden, for example. It is obvious that those who hate freedom cannot have the pride of the 19 (September 11 suicide hijackers), God rest their souls.

If we fought you, it is because we are free men, we do not ignore values, we want to return freedom to our nation. If you play havoc with our security, we play havoc with yours.

You astonish me. Despite the fact that we are into the fourth year after September 11, Bush is still misleading you and hiding the real reason from you, which means that the reasons to repeat what happened remain.

I will tell you about the reasons of these events and about the moments in which the decision (to attack) was taken so you will ponder them.

I swear we never thought of attacking the towers, but when we saw the injustice and arbitrariness of the US-Israeli alliance against our brethren in Palestine and Lebanon, it became too much and the idea came to me.

The events which affected me directly go back to 1982 … when America gave the Israelis the green light to invade Lebanon, with the backing of the US Sixth Fleet.

It is difficult to describe what I felt in these painful moments, but it created an overwhelming feeling of refusal of injustice and a compelling determination to punish the unjust.

As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me that the unjust should suffer the same, that the towers in America must be destroyed so that America gets a taste of what we went through, so that it will stop killing our children and women.

We did not find it hard to deal with Bush and his administration given the similarity with the regimes in our countries, half of which are governed by soldiers and the other half by the offspring of kings and presidents.

We have a long experience with those. Both categories count people who are arrogant, greedy and embezzle (public) funds.

The similarity began at the time of visits by Bush the father (former US president George Bush) to the region.

At a time when some of our kinfolk were impressed by America and hoped that these visits would impact on our countries, it turned out that he was the one affected by these monarchies and military regimes, envying them for keeping their posts tens of years, embezzling public funds without being held accountable or monitored.

He transferred tyranny and repression of freedoms to his son and they called it a national law (US Patriot Act, introduced) under the pretext of combating terrorism.

Bush’s father thought it was a good thing to put his sons to govern states. And he did not forget to transfer (election-) forging skills from the presidents of the region to Florida to use them in critical times.

We had agreed with (suicide hijacker) Mohammad Atta, God rest his soul, that he finishes all operations in 20 minutes before Bush and his administration take notice.

It never occurred to us that the commander-in-chief of the US armed forces would leave 50,000 of his citizens in the two towers to face these horrors alone at a time when they were most in need of him.

He reckoned that it was more important to preoccupy himself with the talk of the little girl about her goat … than with the planes and their strike on the skyscrapers, giving us three times the time required to carry out the operations, thanks be to God.

Your security is not in the hands of (Democratic presidential candidate John) Kerry, Bush or Al-Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands. Any (presidential) mandate which does not play havoc with our security would automatically ensure its own security.”