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© St. Petersburg Times, published June 24, 2002
CAIRO, Egypt -- An audio recording purportedly from one of Osama bin Laden's spokesmen asserts that the al-Qaida leader is alive and his organization intact enough to prepare fresh attacks against the United States.
The recording, broadcast Sunday on the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite television network, also asserts that the bombing of a synagogue in Tunisia in April was carried out by an al-Qaida member angry that Jews were practicing their religion in his country while Palestinians were under siege in Israel. The attack on the island of Djerba killed 17 people, including 11 German tourists.
"Our martyrs are ready for operations against American and Jewish targets inside and outside," said the voice on the tape. "America should be prepared. It should be ready. They should fasten the seat belts. We are coming to them where they never expected. The current American administration every once in a while releases terrorist attack warnings. I say yes, yes, yes, we are going to launch attacks against America."
The tape was purportedly recorded by Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a Kuwaiti religious instructor who was stripped of his nationality when he turned up as a bin Laden spokesman after the Sept. 11 attacks. It is the latest in a series of video and audio recordings that al-Qaida has released, usually through al-Jazeera, in an apparent effort to sustain a public profile even as its leaders are in hiding.
As with earlier recordings, this broadcast provides no direct evidence about whether bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders are alive and healthy. In this tape, Abu Ghaith maintains that bin Laden is in good health, and will appear soon in a television broadcast.
Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said on ABC News that the al-Jazeera tape "seems to be further confirmation" of the U.S. intelligence community's assessment for the past several months that bin Laden "is still alive and probably living in those tribal territories on the western side of Pakistan."
Abu Ghaith says on the tape that the U.S. military action in Afghanistan had not greatly impaired al-Qaida's ability to plan operations.
Future operations will occur "in the time we choose and the place we choose and the method we choose. Not Dick Cheney, not the American secretary of defense, not the American president can determine the place, the method and the means that will use."
WEAPONS FOUND: British marines broke into a suspicious village compound and chanced upon one of the largest weapons caches uncovered in southeastern Afghanistan -- rooms stacked high with hundreds of mortars, rockets and heavy weapons. The marines said Sunday that the arsenal they found stashed in the village of Surwipan near the Pakistani border may have been left by al-Qaida and Taliban fighters. More than 10 men were found in the compound, and some were held by the troops.
PAKISTAN BOMBING: Shredded pieces of a vehicle's gearbox found near the U.S. Consulate in Pakistan are leading police back to their original theory that the blast was carried out by a suicide bomber rather than by remote control. Pakistani Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider told reporters Sunday that investigators now believe the blast, which killed at least 12 people and injured about 50, was set off by the driver of a pickup truck carrying the bomb.
U.S. BASE CLEAN: Tests have shown that initial readings of nerve and mustard gas traces at a U.S. base in Uzbekistan were false, said Col. Roger King said at Bagram air base in Afghanistan.