'Muslims have the right to attack America'

Sunday November 11, 2001

The Observer

Early on Thursday, Hamid Mir, a senior Pakistani journalist, spent two hours in an undisclosed location close to Kabul, with Osama bin Laden. Yesterday part of his interview appeared in Urdu in Mir's paper - the Daily Ausaf - and in the Dawn - an English language paper published from the southern Pakistani city of Karachi. Mir told reporters yesterday that further material from the interview would be released in the coming days.

Hamid Mir: After American bombing on Afghanistan on October 7, you told the Al-Jazeera TV that the 11 September attacks had been carried out by some Muslims. How did you know they were Muslims?

Osama bin Laden: The Americans themselves released a list of the suspects of the 11 September attacks, saying that the persons named were involved. They were all Muslims, of whom 15 belonged to Saudi Arabia, two were from the UAE and one from Egypt. According to the information I have, they were all passengers. Fateha [mourning] was held for them in their homes. But America said they were hijackers.

In your statement of 7 October, you expressed satisfaction over the 11 September attacks, although a large number of innocent people perished in them, hundreds among them were Muslims. Can you justify the killing of innocent men in the light of Islamic teachings?

This is a major point in jurisprudence. In my view, if an enemy occupies a Muslim territory and uses common people as human shield, then it is permitted to attack that enemy. For instance, if bandits barge into a home and hold a child hostage, then the child's father can attack the bandits and in that attack even the child may get hurt.

America and its allies are massacring us in Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir and Iraq. The Muslims have the right to attack America in reprisal. The Islamic Shariat says Muslims should not live in the land of the infidel for long. The 11 September attacks were not targeted at women and children. The real targets were America's icons of military and economic power.

The Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) was against killing women and children. When he saw a dead woman during a war, he asked why was she killed? If a child is above 13 and wields a weapon against Muslims, then it is permitted to kill him.

The American people should remember that they pay taxes to their government, they elect their president, their government manufactures arms and gives them to Israel and Israel uses them to massacre Palestinians. The American Congress endorses all government measures and this proves the entire America is responsible for the atrocities perpetrated against Muslims. The entire America, because they elect the Congress. I ask the American people to force their government to give up anti-Muslim policies. The American people had risen against their government's war in Vietnam. They must do the same today. The American people should stop the massacre of Muslims by their government.

Can it be said that you are against the American government, not the American people?

Yes! We are carrying on the mission of our Prophet, Muhammad (peace be upon him). The mission is to spread the word of God, not to indulge massacring people. We ourselves are the target of killings, destruction and atrocities. We are only defending ourselves. This is defensive Jihad. We want to defend our people and our land. That is why I say that if we don't get security, the Americans, too would not get security.

This is a simple formula that even an American child can understand. This is the formula of live and let live.

The head of Egypt's Jamia Al-Azhar has issued a fatwa (edict) against you, saying your the views and beliefs have nothing to do with Islam. What do you have to say about that?

The fatwa of any official Aalim (cleric) has no value for me. History is full of such Ulema (clerics) who justify Riba (usury), who justify the occupation of Palestine by the Jews, who justify the presence of American troops around Harmain Sharifain. These people support the infidels for their personal gain. The true Ulema support the Jihad against America. Tell me if Indian forces invaded Pakistan what would you do? The Israeli forces occupy our land and the American troops are on our territory. We have no other option but to launch Jihad.

Some Western media claim that you are trying to acquire chemical and nuclear weapons. How much truth is there in such reports?

I heard the speech of American President Bush yesterday (7 November). He was scaring the European countries that Osama wanted to attack with weapons of mass destruction. I wish to declare that if America used chemical or nuclear weapons against us, then we may retort with chemical and nuclear weapons. We have the weapons as deterrent.

Where did you get these weapons from?

Go to the next question.

Demonstrations are being held in many European countries against American attacks on Afghanistan. Thousands of the protesters were non-Muslims. What is your opinion about those non-Muslim protesters?

There are many innocent and good-hearted people in the West. American media instigates them against Muslims. However, some good-hearted people are protesting against American attacks because human nature abhors injustice.

The Muslims were massacred under the UN patronage in Bosnia. I am aware that some officers of the State Department had resigned in protest. Many years ago the US ambassador in Egypt had resigned in protest against the policies of President Jimmy Carter. Nice and civilised are everywhere. The Jewish lobby has taken America and the West hostage.

Some people say that war is no solution to any issue. Do you think that some political formula could be found to stop the present war?

You should put this question to those who have started this war. We are only defending ourselves.

If America got out of Saudi Arabia and the Al-Aqsa mosque was liberated, would you then present yourself for trial in some Muslim country ?

Only Afghanistan is an Islamic country. Pakistan follows the English law. I don't consider Saudi Arabia an Islamic country. If the Americans have charges against me, we too have a charge sheet against them.

Pakistan's government decided to cooperate with America after 11 September, which you don't consider right. What do you think Pakistan should have done but to cooperate with America?

The government of Pakistan should have the wishes of the people in view. It should not have surrendered to the unjustified demands of America. America does not have solid proof against us. It just has some surmises. It is unjust to start bombing on the basis of those surmises.

A French newspaper has claimed that you had kidney problem and had secretly gone to Dubai for treatment last year. Is that correct?

My kidneys are all right. I did not go to Dubai last year. One British newspaper has published an imaginary interview with an Islamabad dateline with one of my sons who lives in Saudi Arabia. All this is false.

Is it correct that a daughter of Mullah Omar is your wife or your daughter is Mullah Omar's wife?

(Laughs) All my wives are Arabs (and all my daughters are married to Arab Mujahideen). I have spiritual relationship with Mullah Omar. He is a great and brave Muslim of this age. He does not fear anyone but Allah. He is not under any personal relationship or obligation to me. He is only discharging his religious duty. I, too, have not chosen this life out of any personal consideration.

Bin Laden taunts the West: 'I'm ready to die'

Smuggled to a mountain lair, a Pakistani journalist met the world's most wanted man. Jason Burke reports

Sunday November 11, 2001

The Observer

They sat and laughed and talked long into the early hours, about religion and war and the meaning of life. But most of all, they talked about death.

They talked about the death of 5,000 on 11 September, about the deaths of millions in wars to come and about the coming death of one man in particular.

Osama bin Laden told his interlocutor, and thus the world, that he feels certain the Americans will kill him sooner or later and that he is 'ready to die'.

It was very early on Thursday morning and the most wanted man in the world was sitting in a heavily disguised room high in the hills somewhere near the Afghan capital Kabul, talking to a Pakistani journalist.

It was his first face-to-face interview since the attacks on New York and Washington. And although he 'was in high spirits' and 'laughed readily', there was no mistaking the frightening harshness of his message.

'We have chemical and nuclear weapons as a deterrent,' the 44-year-old Saudi-born terrorist said at one point in the two-hour exchange. 'If America used them against us we reserve the rights to use them [too].'

It was the first time bin Laden had claimed a non-conventional capability and a sign of an astonishing confidence. Even inviting a journalist to see him - as American planes and spy satellites traversed the skies looking for him - was a considerable risk. But bin Laden was willing to take chances to get his message across.

The face he showed to the world was not that of a man on the run. If he was disguising his true feelings he did it masterfully. Instead he delivered one of the most informed explanations yet of his twisted ideology.

The old reliance on Islamic history or obscure Koranic law was gone. Instead there was a confident, articulate, politically acute exposition by a man sensitive to the power of his words; a man who, reconciled to death by his warped faith, appeared to be revelling both in his predicament and his historic role.

As ever he denied, and did not deny, involvement in the 11 September hijackings, saying that all Americans were responsible for the 'massacring' of Muslims in 'Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir and Iraq' and that Muslims have 'the right to attack... in reprisal'.

'The American people should remember that they pay taxes to their government, they elect their president, their government manufactures arms and gives them to Israel and Israel uses them to massacre Palestinians. The American Congress endorses all government measures and this proves that the entire America [sic] is responsible,' he said, revealing a new grasp of American politics. Bin Laden then called on the American people to 'rise up' against the war as they did 'against Vietnam' adding that he was against the American government not the people.

He blamed the 'Jewish lobby' who, he said, had 'taken America hostage'.

Bin Laden has learnt to manipulate the media in recent years to boost support in the Muslim world.

His most recent press operation started nearly two weeks ago when a tall, slim Afghan, whose identity is known to The Observer, arrived in the Pakistani frontier city of Peshawar and started talking to local journalists about a possible 'press conference'.

The man - who frequently acts as a courier for al-Qaeda - sought out Hamid Mir, a tubby, moustachioed Pakistani newspaper editor who has met bin Laden on several occasions, and who is based in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital.

Mir, who three years ago obtained bin Laden's co-operation on a biography, is the editor of the Urdu language Daily Ausaf newspaper - one of the most widely read local language publications in Pakistan. He is also known for his Islamist sympathies and his excellent contacts with hardline elements within Pakistan's powerful military security agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence. Al-Qaeda knew Mir to be both secure and sympathetic.

By Tuesday, the 36-year-old was in Kabul. On Wednesday morning he was told to be ready to travel. By early evening the journalist found himself bouncing blindfolded in the rear seat of a twin-cab pick-up truck on a dirt road on the way out of the city.

At one point, with a blanket wrapped over his head, he was moved to another vehicle. Then the spine-jarring trip continued.

It lasted five hours. Eventually the pick-up stopped. It was, Mir said, very cold, indicating that they were somewhere high.

Mir was hustled down from the pick-up and when his blindfold was removed he found himself in what seemed to be a small room - though it was impossible to see much. Traditional local brown wool blankets had been pinned up to form screens around him.

Then, watched by half a dozen stone-faced guards, he waited. After a long time, long enough for more security checks, bin Laden and his chief aide, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian hardline Islamist and the chief ideologue of bin Laden's al-Qaeda group, entered the room and sat down on embroidered blue cushions. The interview lasted two hours.

Mir asked his questions in English, then Zawahiri, a trained surgeon, translated them to Arabic for the 'emir' to answer.

The full transcript of their discussions has yet to be released but it is clear they were wide-ranging. Bin Laden was, according to Mir yesterday, in 'high spirits'.

'He's very healthy and he laughs a lot. Previously he was very softly spoken. Now he speaks like an experienced orator, he is very hard-hitting... There's a big change in that man.'

Bin Laden was aware of the danger he was in.

Mir said: 'He told me, "I am ready to die. I know that they can bomb this place also. They are not aware that I am present here. But they are dropping bombs blindly everywhere. So I may get killed even with you".'

The whereabouts of bin Laden were effectively disguised by the precautions taken during Mir's interview but it is now clear that the terrorist and his aides are far closer to Kabul than previously thought.

He is probably within 50 miles of the capital, possibly in the hills of Paghman province to its east.

Bin Laden told Mir that his own death would change little. 'My cause will continue after my death,' bin Laden said.

'They think they will solve this problem by killing me. It's not easy to solve this problem. This war has been spread all over the world.'

My weekend with Osama bin Laden

'Having borne arms against the Russians in Afghanistan for 10 years, we think our battle with the Americans will be easy by comparison'

Abdul Bari Atwan

Monday November 12, 2001

The Guardian

Abdul Bari Atwan: In your recent message [to the world's Muslims] you declared jihad against the US forces, and called for a boycott of American goods. Many people expected further operations like that at al-Khobar [the bombing of an American barracks in Saudi Arabia], but this hasn't happened.

Osama bin Laden: Military people are not unaware that preparations for major operations take a certain amount of time, unlike minor operations. If we wanted small actions, the matter would have been easily carried out immediately after the statement. [But] the nature of the battle calls for operations of a specific type that will make an impact on the enemy, and this of course calls for excellent preparation.

We saw the Riyadh and al-Khobar bombing as a sufficient signal for people of intelligence among American decision-makers to avoid the real battle between the nation of Islam and the American forces, but it seems that they didn't understand the signal.

ABA: What was it intended to signify?

OBL: If they understood the signal it would mean withdrawing all troops from the region. We believe the American government has committed the greatest mistake in entering a peninsula that no religion from among the non-Muslim nations has entered for 14 centuries, despite the presence of imperialist troops in the region. They were all too awestruck to enter the region of the two holy places and remained on the edges, such as in Yemen and Oman.

The British and others used to respect the feelings of more than a billion Muslims, and therefore did not occupy the land of the two holy places, and America's interests were not harmed by it not entering it. The oil was sold to it - we are not going to drink it - and they were still able to impose a policy that depressed prices to an ideal level.

Their arrival [on the Arabian peninsula] was an aberration and a reckless act, for it brought them into confrontation with a nation numbering a billion Muslims.

ABA: You were silent for a long time then suddenly decided to re-emerge, having had a comfortable stay in Sudan. What was the turning point at which you had to take responsibility for this great opposition?

OBL: I had decided myself, after the Saudi government clamped down on the country's ulema [religious scholars] - dismissing them from posts in universities and mosques, and banning distribution of their tapes, virtually preventing them from speaking - that I would start saying what was right and denouncing what was wrong.

I issued statements from Sudan, and when the Saudi government realised the big impact they were having, and how effective they were, it overcame all its differences with the Sudanese regime, which had been making great efforts to improve relations with Riyadh, only to have them arrogantly rebuffed.

Then, after statement 17, which was an open letter to the king [Fahd] on the occasion of the cabinet reshuffle, the Saudi government contacted its Sudanese counterparts at the highest levels and asked to make their peace with them.

With God's help we returned to the land of Khorasan [an old name for the area covering today's Afghanistan], where we have security and dignity, far away from the humiliations visited on our brothers in our country.

ABA: Did you go to Sudan at the invitation of the government or some other party?

OBL: I went on my own initiative without an invitation.

ABA: Did you expect the Saudi government to take the step of demanding your departure?

OBL: There was always that possibility, and so we were arranging alternatives such as Afghanistan, and therefore kept our camps there.

ABA: Did you fight the Americans in Somalia?

OBL: The only non-Somali faction to fight the Americans was the Arab mojahedin brothers who were in Afghanistan. So the war we are waging with America is not the first, and we pray to God to give us victory over them as previously.

We were surprised by the [low] level of morale of the American troops in the Somalia war. There was nothing that they were fighting for except media glory.

There was no comparison between them and the Russian combatants we fought in Afghanistan, who were braver and more patient than their American counterparts. Having borne arms against the Russians in Afghanistan for 10 years, we think our battle with the Americans will be easy by comparison and we are now more determined to carry on until we see the face of God.

ABA: There were reports, after the Taliban movement took power in Kabul, that your presence as Afghan Arabs was no longer wanted. Is this true?

OBL: Our relations with the Taliban are excellent... and we feel completely satisfied with the cooperation with them.

ABA: If you fell out with the Taliban, for whatever reason, would you return to Sudan?

OBL: I can't go back to Sudan, not because I want to have nothing to do with Sudan, but because our natural place is in the mountains.

ABA: What about Iraq?

OBL: Iraq is not an option. The choice is between Afghanistan and Yemen. The geography of Yemen is mountainous and its people are armed tribespeople. It allows one to breathe clean air without humiliation.

ABA: With or without the knowledge of the Yemeni government?

OBL: Either.

ABA: Soon, do you think?

OBL: I don't think in the foreseeable future.

ABA: Have you thought of seeking asylum in Europe like others? And have you visited London, in particular, either secretly or openly?

OBL: I would rather die than settle in any European state. But some Arab governments spread such rumours to discredit me. It is better for Muslims not to settle in non-Muslim societies. And it is not true that I contemplated going to London or obtaining a visa. The purpose of such rumours is to tarnish [my reputation].