New Bin Laden Videotape Not New According To Experts

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden released a new videotape on Friday however it appears to actually be the Pashto-language version of a tape released by al Qaeda several months ago.

The tape, titled “To Our People in Pakistan,” was broadly released in Arabic and Urdu on July 12, IntelCenter said. Excerpts had been aired by the Al Jazeera television network on June 3, it added.

Earlier on Friday, IntelCenter had said al-Qaeda’s as-Sahab Media had released a new video from bin Laden.

In his remarks broadcast by Al Jazeera in June, Saudi-born bin Laden said U.S. President Barack Obama had planted the seeds of “revenge and hatred” toward the United States in the Muslim world and warned Americans to prepare for the consequences.

In an audio message posted on an Islamist website in September, Osama warned Americans over their government’s close ties with Israel.

Osama is believed to be hiding in the mountainous border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

via Bin Laden videotape not new, monitoring site says | Reuters.

Western Terror Recruits Are On The Rise

A rising number of Western recruits including Americans are traveling to Afghanistan and Pakistan to attend paramilitary terrorist training camps.

Midway through a propaganda video released last month by a group calling itself the German Taliban, a surprise guest made an appearance: a cleanshaven, muscular gunman sporting the alias Abu Ibrahim the American.

The gunman did not speak but wore military fatigues and waved his rifle as subtitles identified him as an American. The video contained a stream of threats against Germany if it did not withdraw its troops from the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan. Although the American’s part in the film lasted only a few seconds, it has alarmed German and U.S. intelligence officials, who are still puzzling over his background, his real identity and how he became involved with the terrorist group.

U.S. and European counterterrorism officials say a rising number of Western recruits including Americans are traveling to Afghanistan and Pakistan to attend paramilitary training camps. The flow of recruits has continued unabated, officials said, in spite of an intensified campaign over the past year by the CIA to eliminate al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders in drone missile attacks.

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New Bin Laden Audio Tape May Indicate Upcoming Attack

al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s latest message, released today, contains language considered by many in the Intelligence community to be a valid indicator of an upcoming attack.

An AFP news report posted this afternoon cites the the concern.

“This indicator when viewed in light of the five Abu Talha videos this year, three of which have been released in the last eight days and their focus on the upcoming elections in Germany, significantly raises the threat level even further,” IntelCenter said.

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Site Intelligence Group Has More

Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, addresses European peoples in a new audio message released on jihadist forums on September 25, 2009.

The audio comes in a 4 minute, 47 second video produced by al-Qaeda’s media arm, as-Sahab, and shows only a still image on bin Laden.

Bin Laden asks Europeans to cease their alliance with the US and withdraw their forces from Afghanistan, saying: “An intelligent man doesn’t waste his money and sons for a gang of criminals in Washington, and it is a shameful thing for a person to be in a coalition whose supreme commander has no regard for human life…

Site Intelligence Group

Thomas Hegghammer at Jihadica thinks bin Laden may be laying the groundwork for an attack that is months away, or hoping to inspire a grassroots group or individual in Europe to take action on his behalf.

…My guess is that these messages are primarily intended to influence German public opinion at a crucial juncture in the Western campaign in Afghanistan. Germany is a pivotal player in the coalition; her withdrawal could initiate a vicious (or virtuous, depending on one’s preferences) circle of European withdrawals from the Afghanistan enterprise. Al Qaida is focusing the weakest link in the coalition, just as the Madrid bombers were advised to do.

jihadica

Osama bin Laden Plotting New Attacks

Osama bin Laden and the core al-Qaida leadership are plotting new attacks against the United States and its allies from safe havens
in Pakistan, a senior US official warned Thursday.

Officials have said President Barack Obama’s new Afghan-Pakistan strategy will focus on destroying safe havens for terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Read more

U.S. Zeros In On Chitral Pakistan In Hunt For bin Laden

Where’s Osama? Try Chitral, once a trekkers’ paradise in Pakistan that has been sealed off to outsiders and is now regularly buzzed by American spy drones.

The U.S. won’t say it officially, but an exhaustive Daily News investigation finds the world’s biggest manhunt for the monster who murdered nearly 3,000 people on 9/11 has zeroed in on Chitral’s stunning peaks and deep valleys.

Six U.S. and foreign officials confirmed to The News that northwestern Pakistan’s impenetrable Hindu Kush mountains – which boast some of the world’s tallest climbs – in the Chitral region have been eyed as Bin Laden’s hideout since 2006 by Osama hunters aiming for the big kill.

A lengthy review of evidence, including recent Predator fly-bys, Bin Laden’s tapes since 9/11 and interviews with three dozen experts on Al Qaeda, Pakistan and special operations, point to these vast mountains as the terror chief’s most likely haven.

Captured Al Qaeda leaders have given up as his hideout. “Debriefings of Al Qaeda leaders arrested confirmed this,” said Rohan Gunaratna, author of “Inside Al Qaeda.”

Two senior foreign officials said the nearby town of Kalam also is suspect.

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Osama Bin Laden Releases New Audio Message

Osama bin Laden says in a new audio message that Israel attacked Gaza because of the “great and swift decline in America’s influence,” CBS News reports.

“Israelis are in a rush to get rid of their enemies in Gaza, and replace them with [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas and his administration, in order for him to protect their backs,” the network quotes bin Laden as saying. “They thus carried out this horrific butchery before the end of Bush’s term in office before the American weakness shows even more.”

Bin Laden, the head of al-Qaeda, has been in hiding since the United States invaded Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The network says it downloaded the unauthenticated 22-minute-long message from an Islamist website.

The Associated Press says bin Laden criticized governments in the region for keeping Arabs from fighting to “liberate Palestine.”

“There is only one strong way to bring the return of Al-Aqsa and Palestine, and that is jihad in the path of God,” the terrorist leader says, according to AP. “The duty is to urge people to jihad and to enlist the youth into jihad brigades.”

“Muslim nation, you are capable of defeating the Zionist entity with your popular capabilities and your great hidden strength — without the support of [Arab] leaders and despite the fact that most of [the leaders] stand in the barracks of the Crusader-Zionist alliance,” he says.

via Source – USATODAY.com.

Jihadis Discussed Poisoning the Water Supply of Denmark and Great Britain

A major jihadi internet forum has posted a terrorist plot to use chemical and biological agents to contaminate water resources in Europe in general and Great Britain and Denmark in particular, the latter in retaliation for insulting the Prophet Muhammad through publication of the infamous “Muhammad cartoons.” Read more