Monday, February 08, 2010
 Former detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Said al-Shahri |
"American and Crusader interests are everywhere and their agents are moving everywhere," the AQAP's number two, Said al-Shihri, said in an audio message posted on the Internet.
"Attack them and eliminate as many enemies as you can," the militant leader said in the statement also picked up by the US-based SITE monitoring service.
The US monitors quoted Shihri as saying Yemeni Muslims "must be united in this battle front and support the mujahedeen," and urged "Muslims elsewhere in the Arabian peninsula to do the same" and "embrace jihad."
Shihri called on Yemeni tribes, "especially Al-Awalak, to fight the agents who are plotting with the Crusaders against the Muslims."
Al-Awalak is the tribe of Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical Yemeni-American cleric with reported links to US Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who went on a deadly shooting rampage in Texas in November, and to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian suspected of trying to blow up a US passenger jet on December 25.
"We salute the glorious invasion of Farouk," Shihri said, adding: "We repeat what our Sheikh Osama said, that America will not dream of security until we live in security in Palestine."
He was referring to an audio message last month by Osama bin Laden, in which the Al-Qaeda chief warned US President Barack Obama of further attacks and described Abdulmutallab as a "hero."
Shihri also criticised the Saudi ruling family, saying "the criminals of Al-Saud family are carrying out a war on the Muslims as proxies for the Zionist-Crusaders."
An Al-Qaeda aim was to gain control of the strategic Bab al-Mandab strait which connects the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea, Shihri said.
He emphasised "the importance of Bab al-Mandab which if we, God willing, controlled it and brought it back to the house of Islam, would be a great victory and would give us great influence."
Then, he said, we could "close the door and tighten the noose on the Jews, because through (Bab al-Mandab), America brings support to them by the Red Sea."
He thanked Somali Al-Shebab militants for offering to support AQAP, and called for cooperation "in our next battle against the leader of the infidels, America, for you and we are on the shores of Bab al-Mandab."
In late December, Yemen's government stepped up its campaign against AQAP, backed by the US intelligence as international pressure mounted after the failed plane bombing.
Shihri used his latest message to deny that any Al-Qaeda leaders had been killed in the campaign.
"I bring you glad tidings that your mujahedeen children in the peninsula... are fine, and with grace from Allah, our leaders have (not) sustained any harm," SITE quoted him as saying.
Speaking on Sunday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that while a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a threat, the threat from Al-Qaeda was greater.
"I think that most of us believe the greater threats are the trans-national non-state networks," she said of Al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Afghanistan, North Africa, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
She cautioned that the terror network was evolving to become "more creative, more flexible and more agile.
"They are, unfortunately, a very committed, clever, diabolical group of terrorists who are always looking for weaknesses and openings and we just have to stay alert," Clinton said.
Source: AFP