Bin Laden threatens French in Africa

Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden has warned France to expect more of its nationals to be kidnapped because of Paris’s policy in Africa and the ban on the burka and niqab. In an audio recording released toAl Jazeera television on Wednesday, he justifies the kidnapping of five French citizens in Niger last month and tells France to quit Afghanistan.

Reuters

Bin Laden told the French that “the reason why your security is being threatened and your sons are being taken hostage” is that “you intervene in the affairs of Muslims, in north and west Africa in particular”.

French foreign policy involves supporting puppet governments in the region and plundering “a lot of our wealth in suspicious deals, while our people there suffer various forms of poverty and despair”.

Al-Qaeda’s north African wing, Aqim, kidnapped five French citizens, along with a Malagasy and Togolese, in September. The hostages are reported to being held in the mountains of north-west Mali but French officials say they have received no demands from Aqim. Another Frenchman, Michel Germaneau, was killed in Mali in July.

Bin Laden also slams the French law against face-covering garments, aimed at banning the burka and niqab worn by some Muslim women.

 
"If you unjustly thought that it is your right to prevent free Muslim women from wearing the face veil, is it not our right to expel your invading men and cut their necks?” he asks rhetorically.

And he calls on France to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, where two French journalists are being held hostage.

"The equation is very clear and simple: as you kill, you will be killed; as you take others hostage, you will be taken hostage; as you waste our security we will waste your security," he says.