Leader of al Qa'eda's Yemeni offshoot posts eulogy for slain bin Laden

Nasser al Wahishi, the head of al Qa'eda in the Arabian Peninsula and once a close associate of Osama bin Laden, warned Americans of a bloodier jihadist struggle to come.

Omar bin Laden, the fourth son of Osama bin Laden, stands outside a tent on the outskirts of Cairo, on September 11, 2008, the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

The day after the sons of Osama bin Laden denounced their father's "arbitrary killing" in a New York newspaper, the leader of al Qa'eda's Yemeni offshoot posted a eulogy for the slain leader on Islamic extremist websites.

Nasser al Wahishi, the head of al Qa'eda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and once a close associate of bin Laden, warned Americans of a bloodier jihadist struggle to come.

"You have to fight one generation after the other, until your life is ruined, your days are disturbed and you face disgrace. The fight between us and you was not led by Osama alone," said Mr al Wahishi, addressing al Qa'eda's enemies.

"What is coming is greater and worse, and what you will be facing is more intense and harmful," he said.

Mr Wahishi, a top target of US forces, was a personal aide to bin Laden in Afghanistan in the 1990s, and he has stuck closely to the leader's ideology and operational tactics. AQAP is seen as one of al Qa'eda's most aggressive regional wings.

US forces killed bin Laden in a raid on his hideout in Pakistan last week after a nearly 10-year hunt for one of the main architects of the September 11 attacks.

Bin Laden's sons, in a statement Tuesday in The New York Times, asked why their father "was not arrested and tried in a court of law so that the truth is revealed to the people of the world".

They said the whole family felt demeaned and humiliated by the father's burial at sea after he was killed on May 2 in an Abbottabad compound where he is believed to have lived for years.

The statement is said to have been prepared at the direction of his son, Omar bin Laden, 30, and given to the newspaper by the American author Jean Sasson, who helped Omar bin Laden write a 2009 memoir, Growing Up bin Laden.

It also called for the al Qa'eda leader's wives, whom the US is seeking to question, and children to be released. Pakistani officials have said three of bin Laden's wives were taken from the house after the raid, all of them Yemeni or Saudi, and 13 of their children. His Yemeni wife, Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah, was shot in the leg during the operation.

"We maintain that arbitrary killing is not a solution to political problems," the statement said, adding that "justice must be seen to be done".

Omar bin Laden, who the Times said was the son of bin Laden and another wife, Najwa bin Laden, condemned the shooting in the statement, which did not name any of his brothers. The exact whereabouts of the bin Laden family is unclear. The September 11 attacks were blamed on their father. The statement said: "We want to remind the world that Omar bin Laden, the fourth-born son of our father, always disagreed with our father regarding any violence and always sent messages to our father, that he must change his ways and that no civilians should be attacked under any circumstances.

"Despite the difficulty of publicly disagreeing with our father, he never hesitated to condemn any violent attacks made by anyone, and expressed sorrow for the victims of any and all attacks."

A shorter, slightly different statement was posted on a jihadist Web site on Tuesday in which the sons said bin Laden's burial at sea "demeaned and humiliated" his family.

"It is unacceptable - humanely and religiously - to dispose of a person with such importance and status among his people, by throwing his body into the sea in that way, which demeans and humiliates his family and his supporters and which challenges religious provisions and feelings of hundreds of millions of Muslims," said the shorter statement, provided by the SITE monitoring group.

Barack Obama, the US president, will deliver a speech reaching out to the Muslim world, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.

Mr Obama is preparing a wide-ranging address to be delivered as early as next week in which he will make the case that bin Laden's death, paired with popular uprisings sweeping the region, underscores the US view that the al Qa'eda extremist group is a spent force in the Muslim world.

Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser at the White House, told the newspaper that the speech was likely to be delivered before Mr Obama departs on a five-day trip to Europe on May 23.

"It's an interesting coincidence of timing, that he is killed at the same time that you have a model emerging in the region of change that is completely the opposite of bin Laden's model," Mr Rhodes told the newspaper.

Officials said that the president will make the case that bin Laden represented a failed approach of the past while populist movements brewing in the Middle East and North Africa represent the future.

*With additional reporting from Agence France-Presse and Associated Press