Author: Catherine Donaldson-Evans
Publication: FOXSports.com
Date: November 05, 2003
URL: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,102179,00.html
An Al Qaeda Web site is running
a warning issued to Muslims to leave Washington, D.C., New York City and
Los Angeles because of implied imminent terrorist attacks, according to
the Middle East Media Research Institute.
Titled "A Warning to Muslims in
America," the directive was issued by the previously unknown "Islamic Bayan
Movement" and first ran on the Global Islamic Media Web site on Monday,
according to MEMRI, which translated the communiqué.
It has since been published on the
Al Qaeda-run site Al Faroq, a MEMRI release said. The Global Islamic Media
site has published several messages from Jihad groups around the world
in recent months.
As of Tuesday, there had been no
increase in the Pentagon's yellow terror alert status. Yellow represents
an "elevated" status on the five-point chart.
"Our Muslim brothers in America,
we ask you to immediately leave the following cities: Washington, D.C.,
New York, and Los Angeles," reads the communiqué, which frequently
quotes the Quran.
"We are serious in our warning,"
the message states. "The next few days will prove to you the truth of this
warning . To the oppressive rulers of America we say: Expect our terms
following the first strike of Allah's believing soldiers [Quran, Chapter
59, Verse 2-3]."
The directive claims that U.S. soldiers
stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan "are the only ones who know the bitter
truth" about the situation overseas.
"How would they not when they see
every day dozens of casualties from among their friends, the soldiers who
die and nobody, even not their stupid rulers, is sorry for them," the communiqué
states. "Then they hear the lies and distortion their rulers [tell] their
people and the peoples of the world regarding the number of their dead
."
The communiqué refers to
the "sufferings" of Muslims, saying they are victims of oppression, imprisonment
and murder.
It ends with another verse from
the Quran [Chapter 9, Verse 14]: "Fight them: Allah will punish them at
your hands, and will humiliate them, and will help you to overcome them,
and will relieve the minds of the believers."
In conjunction with the memo, Al
Qaeda's Al Faroq posted a photo of the Chinook helicopter shot down on
Sunday with a caption in Arabic that reads: "We shall bring down and destroy
the values of the Hubal of this generation." Fifteen Americans died in
the helicopter attack.
Hubal was a pre-Islamic-era Meccan
idol used by Muslims to symbolize the U.S., according to MEMRI.