Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri launched a blistering attack on the United Nations Wednesday calling it the enemy of Islam and Muslims in an online audio file. "The United Nations is an enemy of Islam and Muslims: it is the one which codified and legitimized the setting up of the state of Israel and its taking over of the Muslims' lands," Zawahiri said.
"We haven't killed the innocents, not in Baghdad, nor in Morocco, nor in Algeria, nor anywhere else," Zawahiri said in the audio lasting one hour and 43 minutes, which marked his third public message this year. "And if there is any innocent who was killed in the Mujahedeen's operations, then it was either an unintentional error, or out of necessity," he said in the audio, released by the group's media arm As-Sahab.
"Those who kill innocents are the Americans, the Jews, the Russians and the French and their agents," he added.
Zawahiri also slammed the United Nations, accusing it of double standards. The United Nations "is the one which considers Chechnya an inseparable part of Crusader Russia, and consider Ceuta and Melilla inseparable parts of Crusader Spain," he said, referring to two Spanish enclaves in North Africa claimed by Morocco.
Yet "it doesn't recognize that [right] for Chechnya, nor for all the Muslim Caucasus, nor for Kashmir, nor for Ceuta and Melilla, nor for Bosnia," he added.
The terror network's number two also said that its leader Osama bin Laden, who has evaded capture by the US military since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, was still alive.
"Sheikh Osama bin Laden is healthy and well by the grace of Allah," Zawahiri said.
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