DUBAI: Osama bin Laden urged Europeans to break ranks with the United States and quit Afghanistan, while stressing he alone was behind the 9/11 attacks, in a tape attributed to him on Al-Jazeera television.
The United States 'insisted on invading' Afghanistan even though it knew that the Afghans were not behind the 2001 attacks, and 'Europe walked behind it', the voice purported to be that of the Al-Qaeda chief said in a 'message to the European peoples'.
"It would be better for you if you (restrained) your politicians who flock to the White House and worked actively to end the wrong done to the oppressed," he said in the audiotape broadcast on Thursday.
"I am responsible" for the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, the speaker said.
Qatar-based Al-Jazeera aired a head shot of a smiling bin Laden wearing a white headdress.
"The truth, as I said before, is that the Manhattan events were in retaliation for the killing of our kinfolk in Palestine and Lebanon by the US-Israeli alliance and that I am responsible for them," the voice said.
"I affirm that the Afghans -- government and people -- had no knowledge whatsoever of these events and America knows that," since it captured and interrogated some ministers from the Islamist militant Taliban movement, which was ousted from power by a 2001 US invasion."
By following in the footsteps of the US in Afghanistan, Europe could only be a 'subordinate' to Washington, as attested to by the fact that 'you entered this war and US soldiers were exempted from accountability in European courts'.
