'Qaeda tapes' warn of more attacks

[CaptinCrunch]

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (CNN) -- Tapes attributed to Osama bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, have warned that more terror attacks are coming and criticized France's push to ban Islamic head scarves in schools.

The messages -- also heavily criticizing U.S. President George W. Bush -- were aired on the Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera Arabic-language TV networks Tuesday, but it was unclear whether the tapes were the same.

In the tape aired by the Qatar based satellite Al-Jazeera, the voice said: "The Islamic nation which sent you the New York and Washington brigades has taken a firm decision to send you successive brigades to sow death and aspire to paradise."

Addressing the American people, the voice said: "Whenever you receive a coffin, they should remember the U.S. crimes all over the world."

The speaker described Bush as spreading false information in the United States, promoting fear and frustration in the Middle Eastern region, and appointing corrupt leaders.

The speaker spoke on what he called Bush's "four claims" -- that U.S. forces are trying to promote freedom and security, that U.S. forces helped Iraq to get its freedom, that the U.S. forces captured more than two-thirds of al Qaeda leaders, and the situation in Afghanistan is stable.

He said al Qaeda is still waging jihad and "brandishes the banner of Islam against the Zionist-crusader campaign."

In the audiotape broadcast on the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya satellite TV channel, the speaker described the French government efforts to ban head scarves in schools as "part of the West's campaign of hatred against Islam." (Full story)

"The decision of the French president (Jacques Chirac) to issue a law to prevent Muslim girls from covering their heads in schools is another example of the Crusader and envy that the Westerners have against Muslims," said the voice.

"Banning the head scarves in France is in line with burning villages with its inhabitants in Afghanistan, bringing houses down on the heads of sleeping Palestinians, with killing children in Iraq and robbing their oil using false pretexts ... (and) torturing (Muslims) in the cells of Guantanamo," the tape said.

The head scarf bill passed the lower house of the French parliament earlier this month and goes before the French Senate next month.

Al-Arabiya would not disclose how it acquired the tape purportedly from al Qaeda's No. 2 man.

Sources at the station said the tape -- received a few minutes before it was aired -- was not played in its entirety.

The last tape believed to have come from the Egyptian-born doctor was released in December. In it, he warned that his fighters are chasing Americans in their homeland.

[BEER980]

Sounds like a hint of a bio attack but I will have to check into it further.