Americas

US al Qaeda militant warns of worse attacks

(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-05-30 09:13

DUBAI - The United States will face worse attacks than those on September 11, 2001 if it does not heed al Qaeda demands effectively allowing the group control over Muslim countries, a US Islamist militant said on Tuesday.

Adam Gadahn is seen in these undated pictures released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The United States will face worse attacks than those on September 11, 2001 if it does not heed al Qaeda demands effectively allowing the group control over Muslim countries, Gadahn said on Tuesday. [Reuters]

Adam Gadahn, a California-born convert to Islam and the first American to be charged with treason since the World War Two era, appeared in a video posted on the Internet. Gadahn, wearing robes and a turban, is believed to be in Pakistan.

"Your failure to meet our demands ... means that you and your people will, Allah willing, experience things which will make you forget about the horrors of September 11, Afghanistan and Iraq, and Virginia Tech," said the bearded Gadahn, addressing his comments to President George W. Bush.

Gadahn was referring to the Virginia Tech campus shooting rampage last month in which student gunman Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and himself.

"This is not a call for negotiations. We do not negotiate with baby killers and war criminals like you," said Gadahn.

"You will go down in history not only as the president who embroiled his nation in a series of unwinnable and bloody conflicts in the Islamic world but as the president who set the United States up on its death march."

Listing al Qaeda's demands, Gadahn said: "Pull every last one of your soldiers... out of every Muslim land. If so much as one single US soldier or spy remain on Islamic soil it shall be considered sufficient justification for us to continue our defensive jihad against your nation and people."

Gadahn demanded the United States end all support "moral, military, economic or otherwise to the bastard state of Israel and ban your citizens ... from traveling to occupied Palestine or settling there."

The demands also included releasing all Muslim prisoners and stopping support to the "apostate" governments of Muslim states.

He said a US pullout from Iraq alone would not do.

"Things are not going too well for your crusader coalition," Gadahn said of US-led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We will continue to strike hard this year, next year, the year after that and so on until the last crusader goes home, whether waving a white flag or lying in a flag-covered casket."

Last year, an indictment delivered by a grand jury in a federal court in California accused Gadahn of making a series of al Qaeda propaganda videos. The treason charge against him carries a maximum punishment of death.

The FBI has been seeking to question Gadahn since May 2004, and the US government has offered up to $1 million in reward money for information leading to his arrest.

Gadahn converted to Islam from a Jewish-Christian family when he was 17 and a few years later moved to Pakistan. He was previously known as Adam Pearlman and grew up on a goat ranch outside Los Angeles.