Al-Qaeda video says US will target American-Muslims

This still image from video obtained October 11, 2011 courtesy of IntelCenter shows Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri appearing in a new Al-Qaeda video released Tuesday, October 11, 2011, entitled “And the Americans’ Defeats Continue”. Osama bin Laden’s successor, wearing white, dictated his speech for the 13-minute, 13-second video released on extremist forums. He was shown sitting in a cloth-covered chair in front of a green backdrop. Zawahiri, a veteran Egyptian militant and long-time Al-Qaeda number two, took over the network after bin Laden was killed in a clandestine raid by US Navy commandos in Pakistan on May 2. AFP/SITE

HONG KONG – Al-Qaeda released a September 11 anniversary video declaring the United States is at war with Islam and that American Muslims should brace for a “holocaust”, US monitors said Wednesday.

The video, which features Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri as well as its American spokesman Adam Gadahn, is entitled “Truth has Come and Falsehood has Perished” and was posted on jihadist forums, according to SITE and IntelCenter.

According to a SITE transcript, Gadahn rejects President Barack Obama’s assertion that the United States is not at war with Islam because “America is crystal-clear about its opposition to Islam as a political system”.

Referring to US drone strikes, he says: “Today, American Muslims are being killed in Yemen, tomorrow they’re going to be killed (by the US government) in New York and Los Angeles. Get ready for the holocaust.”

The video, which also features al-Qaeda officials Ustadh Ahmad Farooq and Maulvi Asim Umar, also argues that the United States is facing defeat on various battlefronts, according to the monitors.

It totals more than 90 minutes in Arabic, English and Urdu, and comes a day after Zawahiri issued a video eulogising Abu Yahya al-Libi, his late deputy and propaganda chief who was killed in a drone strike in June.

Gadahn, also known as Azzam the American, was born in 1978. He is a native of southern California and has appeared in several videotapes for Al-Qaeda since 2004.

Egyptian Zawahiri, a former eye surgeon, took charge of the extremist group following the death of Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US special forces in May 2011.