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06:00, 1969-Dec-31 .. 0 comments .. Link

Christmas Bombing Try Is Hailed by bin Laden Osama bin Laden, the leader Construction Machinery of Al Qaeda, spoke publicly for the first time about the botched Christmas Day airliner bombing, praising the attempt — but not explicitly taking responsibility for it — in an audiotape broadcast Sunday that was aimed personally at President Obama.

Mr. bin Laden said that the bombing attempt was a heroic act meant to recall the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington. He warned that more strikes against the United States were looming because of American support for what he called Israel’s repression of the Palestinians, one of Mr. bin Laden’s recurring themes in his occasional audiotaped anti-West invectives.

“America will never dream of security unless we will have it in reality in Palestine,” Mr. bin Laden said. “God willing, our raids on you will continue as long as your support to the Israelis will continue.”

Mr. bin Laden said his statement was “from Osama to Obama.”

The one-minute recording, broadcast by Al Jazeera’s Arabic news channel #x, was the first time Mr. bin Laden, who is believed to be hiding in Pakistan near the Afghanistan border, had issued an audiotape in four months.

White House officials said they could not immediately authenticate the recording, but Construction Machinery did not dispute that the voice was Mr. bin Laden’s. David Axelrod, a White House senior adviser, told CNN’s “State of the Union” that whatever the source, the message “contains the same hollow justification for the mass slaughter of innocents.”

It was not clear why Mr. bin Laden waited nearly a month to say anything about the Dec. 25 bombing attempt on Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit, which was carried out by a passenger who sought to detonate explosives sewn into his underwear but was overpowered by other passengers. Federal investigators have said the suspect, a 23-year-old Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, received training and the explosives in Yemen.

“The message delivered to you through the plane of the heroic warrior Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a confirmation of the previous messages sent by the heroes” of Sept. 11, Mr. bin Laden said.

American and Yemeni intelligence analysts said that they believed the veracity of a statement issued Dec. 28 by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the affiliate based in Yemen, claiming responsibility for the attack.

Experts on Al Qaeda said Sunday that Mr. bin Laden’s statement did not change that assessment, since it did not explicitly claim that he or his closest associates in Pakistan played a role in planning or directing the Christmas attack.

“If you read it carefully, it’s not really a claim of responsibility,” said Steven N. Simon, senior fellow for Middle Eastern affairs at the Council on Foreign Relations. “He endorses the attack. He valorizes it. He says Construction Machinery, ‘You’re going to get more of the same.’ ”

Indeed, American intelligence officials have expressed concern that the Yemeni group may have trained other suicide bombers,Travel qingdao, and Britain last week increased its terrorism threat level in advance #x of a conference this week in London on aid to Yemen organized by the British government. 相关的主题文章：