Osama bin Laden has warned that Americans would be killed in retaliation if a US court sentences Khaled Sheikh Mohammed to death, according to an audio recording broadcast today.
Mr Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of the September 11 attacks, is expected to stand trial in a civilian court in America next year. The Obama Administration has already indicated that the toughest sanction is likely to be imposed.
An audio message, apparently recorded by bin Laden, threatens to avenge his death by murdering US citizens who are taken hostage by al-Qaeda.
“The White House has declared its wish to execute [Mohammed]. The day the United States takes such a decision, it would be also taking the decision that any of you falling into our hands will be executed,” said the message broadcast by the al-Jazeera news channel.
“Your friend at the White House is still walking in the footsteps of those before [him] in many important matters,” including in escalating the war in Afghanistan and “oppressing our prisoners that you are holding, beginning with the mujahid hero Khaled al-Sheikh Mohammed,” he said.
The self-styled founder of the al-Qaeda movement said that US politicians have “oppressed us and still do, especially by backing Israel, which occupies the land of Palestine".
The controversial civilian trial of Mr Mohammed was due to be held in Manhattan but the cost of security arrangements is likely to mean that the case is heard in a less metropolitan area.
The case against Mr Mohammed and his four co-accused will be beset by evidence problems because Mohammed was tortured by the CIA soon after his capture in Pakistan. He was subjected to simulated drowning (waterboarding) 183 times in March 2003, making any evidence obtained from him then, and since, almost definitely inadmissible.
Mr Mohammed admitted to interrogators that he was the mastermind behind the attacks. He said that he proposed the idea to bin Laden as early as 1996 before obtaining funding for the attacks, training the hijackers in Afghanistan and Pakistan and then overseeing the operation.
The Pentagon says he has admitted to being responsible "from A to Z" for the attacks against Washington and the World Trade Centre in New York.
He also reportedly claimed that he had personally decapitated Daniel Pearl, an American journalist, in 2002 and admitted to a role in 30 plots, including one carried out by the British shoe bomber Richard Reid.
He was captured in Pakistan in March 2003 and sent to Guantánamo in Cuba in 2006.
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