Al Qaeda No. 2 too releases audio tape

Al Qaeda’s No. 2 Follows bin Laden’s Lead and Resurfaces Just a day after Osama bin Laden resurfaced in a lengthy audiotape, a new recording by his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, appeared on January 20, praising the “martyrs of holy war” in Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories and elsewhere. This development has put the speculation about the death of al Jawahiri in the air-strike by the US inside Pakistan, on Afghan border, at rest. The CIA confirmed that the voice on the 18-minute audiotape, posted on an Internet forum that has carried Al Qaeda communiques before, was Mr. Zawahiri’s. He read a poem honoring the “martyrs of jihad,” or holy war, and dedicated it to “Muslim brothers everywhere, to the mujahedeen brothers in Islam’s fortified borderlines against the Zionist-Crusader campaign in Palestine and Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya and to the lions chasing the crusaders’ gangs and hired hands in Afghanistan’s mountains and valleys and its wounded capital, Kabul.” “I am honored to present this mujahedeen poem, written by Maulai Muhibbulla al-Qandahari, who carried the pen and the sword and was known in the circles of scholars and the training camps and the battlefields of jihad,” he said. It was not immediately clear when the recording was made and whether it had any connection to the release of the Mr. bin Laden’s recording on Thursday. There was no mention, either, of last week’s missile attacks by the United States on a Pakistani village in the country’s remote northeast, where Mr. Zawahiri was thought to be attending a dinner. Mr. Zawahiri appears not to have been present, but his son-in-law and two senior members of Al Qaeda are believed to have been among those killed, Pakistani officials said. The US Press seems to be helping Osama bin Laden and his deputy images, larger than life by providing platform of media to them on platter. Every terrorist wanted to misuse the media. These terrorists from the Middleeast are no exceptions. Better, if the US Government ignores them.