DUBAI: Al Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has urged Muslims to target the United States and avenge the killing of his predecessor Osama bin Laden, the SITE Intelligence Group reported Monday.
SITE, quoting a video posted on jihadist online forums, said the new head of al Qaeda asking Muslims to “pursue” the United States over the killing of Bin Laden.
“America today is staggering… Follow it where you know it is, follow it to cut what remains of its corruption,” said Zawahiri in the 12-minute video addressed to “Muslim brothers everywhere.”
“Pursue America, which killed the ‘Imam of the Mujahideen’ and threw his body into the sea, and then captured his women and sons,” he said about Bin Laden who was killed in a covert US raid in Pakistan on May 2.
Zawahiri, who took over as head of al Qaeda after the killing, also called on Muslims to wage an “intellectual” battle by using modern means of communications.
“The Muslim movement in general and the jihadi movement in particular should wage the battle of intellectual argument just as much as the battle of weapons,” he said.
He also called for the implementation of Islamic Sharia law as a source of legislation in Tunisia and Egypt, where mass protests in both countries have toppled their autocratic rulers early this year.
Now Washington’s most wanted man, Zawahiri was jailed for three years in Egypt for militancy and was implicated in the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981, and a 1997 massacre of tourists in Luxor.
Like Bin Laden, he has been in hiding since the United States declared its war on terror after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
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