An al Qaeda member warned on a videotape Sunday that US
President George Bush's upcoming trip to the Middle East will meet
bombs and booby-traps instead of roses and applause, media reported
Monday.
In the videotape, American al Qaeda member Adam Yahiye Gadahn
renounced his citizenship to protest the imprisonment of Sheikh
Omar Abdul Rahman, a blind Egyptian Muslim leader serving a life
sentence for his role in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center;
and John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban who was arrested in
Afghanistan in 2001, and others.
Gadahn displayed his passport to the camera, ripped it in half
and said, "Don't get too excited -- I don't need it to travel
anyway."
Though Gadahn spoke mostly in English, he referred to Bush --
who is to travel this week to the Middle East -- only in
Arabic.
"We raise an urgent appeal to our mujahedin brothers in the
Muslim Palestine, the Arabian Peninsula in particular, and the
region in general, to be prepared to receive the crusader butcher
Bush on his visit to Muslim Palestine and the occupied peninsula at
the beginning of January," he said. "They should receive him not
with roses and applause, but with bombs and booby-traps."
"His comments are indicative of an al Qaeda ideology that offers
nothing but death and violence," U.S. National Security Council
Spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in a written statement. "President
Bush will travel to the region to stand with the mainstream
governments who want liberty and justice for their people."
The 50-minute tape -- titled "An Invitation to Reflection and
Repentance" -- was released by As Sahab, al Qaeda's video
production wing and was provided to CNN by www.LauraMansfield.com,
a Web site that analyzes terrorism.
"American jihadist" Gadahn, originally from California, is on
the FBI's Most Wanted List, with a reward of up to 1 million
dollars for information leading to his capture.
(Xinhua News Agency via agencies January 7, 2008)
