London bombing
al-Qaeda claims responsibility, warns of more attacks
AP, Cairo
One of the four suicide attackers who bombed London's transit system on July 7 made a dramatic farewell in a videotape that also included al-Qaeda's No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri calling the subway attack "a slap to the face" of Britain and warning of more bloodshed.Mohammad Sidique Khan, a Briton of Pakistani ancestry, said in the tape broadcast on Thursday that Westerners had failed to heed previous warnings. "Therefore we will talk to you in a language that you understand. Our words are dead until we give them life with our blood." The two men did not appear together in the tape instead, shots of each were edited together and al-Zawahri did not mention Khan. A newscaster on al-Jazeera, which aired the tape, said Khan's last "will" came as part of a long tape that consisted mostly of al-Zawahri talking. But the association of the al-Qaeda leader and the 30-year-old suicide bomber was the strongest link yet of a role by the terror organisation in the attacks on three subway trains and a double-decker bus, which killed 56 people. It was not clear where or how long before the July 7 bombings the tape of Khan had been made. Khan did not claim responsibility in the tape for the impending bombings in the name of al-Qaeda. But he said he was inspired by al-Zawahri, by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and by the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi. "Until we feel security, you will be our targets," he said, addressing himself to Westerners. "Until you will stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people, we will not stop this fight." Apparently foreshadowing his plan to die, he said: "I'm sure by now the media has painted a suitable picture of me. Its predictable propaganda machine naturally will tack a spin on things to suit the government and scare the masses to conform to their power- and wealth-obsessed agenda." Khan spoke with a heavy Yorkshire accent, sported a trimmed beard, wore a red-and-white checked keffiyeh and a dark jacket and appeared to be sitting against a wall lined with an ornate carpet. In his remarks, al-Zawahri did not say outright that his terror group carried out the bombings but said the attacks were a direct response to Britain's foreign policies and its rejection of a truce that al-Qaeda offered Europe in April 2004. He threatened the West with "more catastrophes" in retaliation for the policies of President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
| 
