Al-Qaeda’s number two in commend Ayman Zawahiri urged the people of Sudan to prepare for a long guerrilla war against the West and asked the country's embattered President Omar al-Bashir to "repent," in an Internet video message released on Tuesday.
Zawahiri said the Sudanese people should "make preparations by training, equipping, storing and organizing for a long guerrilla war, because the modern-day Crusade (Westerners) has bared its fangs at you."
In relation to the ICC’s arrest warrant for Bashir earlier this month on charges of war crimes over the conflict in Darfur, Zawahiri said the Sudan’s regime was "reaping what it sowed."
Western Ploy
But the Qaeda leader said the court’s ruling was a ploy by Western powers to interfere in Sudan and asked Bashir to "repent."
"So will the Bashir regime take the path of Islam and jihad and abandon the political maneuvers, diplomatic ruses and international smooth-talking, which has not and will not bring anything other than disasters and tragedies?" Zawahiri said.
"I am not defending Omar al-Bashir or his regime, nor am I defending what it has done in Darfur and elsewhere," he added.
"I am not defending Omar al-Bashir or his regime, nor am I defending what it has done in Darfur and elsewhere"
Ayman Zawahiri, al-Qaeda leaderZawahri said the arrest warrant for Bashir is not act of implementing justice by the ICC or an attempt to solve problems in Darfur.
"It is about finding an excuse for more foreign interference in the Muslim countries in the framework of the contemporary crusader-Zionist campaign," Zawahri said.
He added that world leaders ranging from former U.S. President George W.
Bush to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and senior Israeli officials deserved to be put on trial.
"Indeed, why didn’t they try (former U.S. President Harry S.) Truman, who ordered the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the first atomic bombs in history?," the Qaeda leader asked.
The authenticity of the 17-minute recording could not be verified but it was issued by Qaeda’s media arm As-Sahab and posted on main Islamist websites. The speaker sounded like in earlier recordings by Zawahri.