The following are excerpts from a video featuring Al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on September 19, 2005. TO VIEW THIS CLIP VISIT: http://memritv.org/clip/en/856.htm.
Al-Zawahiri: "What did [the Americans] accomplish in Afghanistan? They removed the Taliban government from Kabul, and it settled in the villages and mountains, where the real power of Afghanistan lies. Northern Afghanistan and Kabul have become a scene of chaos, pillaging, looting, defiling [women's] honor, and drug dealing, which have flourished under the American occupation. Then they held elections, which resembled a masquerade more than anything, since the country's periphery is controlled by highway bandits and warlords, because the international committees monitoring the elections – or rather, those who bear false witness – could not cover more than 10 voting districts, even if they wanted to.
"Transferring the ballot boxes takes 15 days, under the control of the warlords and highway bandits, and then under the control of the occupation forces, and since any resistance, or anything resembling resistance or opposition, is met with bombardment, missiles, the burning of villages, and the killing of hundreds. After all this, they obtained the false testimony of the UN, which had seen nothing about which it could bear witness – except for several theatrics in a few voting districts in the cities. This is one example of the hypocrisy of the UN, which they claim to be the symbol of their international legitimacy.
"While the UN rejects the elections held in Zimbabwe, for example, because the time dedicated to voting was insufficient, it is silent as a graveyard about the elections in Afghanistan, which were held under the terrorism of the warlords. For fifteen days, the ballot boxes were passed around among the highway bandits and the American collaborators, and no one knows what happened to them before they appeared at the ballot-counting centers. While the UN whines about those killed in Darfur and establishes an international tribunal for the war crimes committed there, it was as silent as a graveyard about the tragedy of one million Iraqi children, who died as a result of the siege on Iraq – the same siege that profited UN officials and the son of Kofi Annan, as the UN itself admits. The UN was recently forced to reveal a part of this scandal, the stench of which spreads far and wide.
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"The blessed London raid is one of the raids that the Qaedat Al-Jihad organization had the honor of carrying out against British Crusader arrogance, as well as the British Crusader aggression towards the Muslim nation over more than 100 years, against Britain's historic crime of establishing Israel, and against the ongoing crimes of the English perpetrated against Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"The last wills of the heroic brothers, the knights of monotheism in the London raids – may Allah have mercy upon them, may He place them in Paradise, and may He accept their good deeds... In these wills there are important lessons for the Muslim nation in general, and especially for Muslims in Pakistan and the West, about renouncing tyrants and exposing the lies of the scholars of evil, who conceal much of the Shari'a, preferring fleeting things of this life.
"This blessed raid and its sister raids have revealed the true, hypocritical face of Western culture, which praises human rights and liberties, as long as these praises serve its interests and benefit it. After the London raid, the British government started legislating a number of new laws that reveal Britain's despicable imperialistic face. They revealed that British freedom is, in fact, the freedom to be hostile to Islam. British freedom was broad enough to include Salman Rushdie, who recently published an article in The Times in which he calls upon Muslims to reach harmony with Western culture, casts doubt upon the divine entity and the Koran, and calls upon Muslims to accept Western values like homosexuality. However, its freedom was not broad enough to include Sheikh Abu Qatada, whom it arrested that same day, along with nine others, after signing extradition treaties with Jordan and Pakistan, knowing full well that members of the Muslim factions extradited to these countries would be subject to torture and even death.
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"Reform can only take place through Jihad for the sake of Allah, and any call for reform that is not through Jihad is doomed to death and failure. We must understand the nature of the battle and conflict. Our enemies will not grant us our rights without Jihad. No one should be deceived by what happened in Georgia, the Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and so on, because those were changes that America wanted and encouraged. It allowed them to happen, and prevented the Russians from interfering. The Americans will not allow any Islamic regime to assume rule in the heart of the Islamic world, unless it collaborates with them, as is happening now in Iraq.
"Isn't America sending prisoners from Guantanamo and Bagram to Egypt and Jordan, where they are tortured by the very regimes which America insists should respect human rights? Brother Ibn Al-Sheikh Al-Liby was taken in a coffin and was transferred from Bagram to the National Security Department in Cairo, where he was severely tortured and held for one year, after which he was returned to Bagram. This is one of thousands of examples."
