Bin Laden: If US Executes KSM, We'll Kill Americans

US official dismisses threat as 'absurdity'
By Harry Kimball,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 25, 2010 1:21 PM CDT
Bin Laden: If US Executes KSM, We'll Kill Americans
Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.   (AP Photo)

If the US executes admitted 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda will do the same to any American prisoners it takes, says Osama bin Laden in an as-yet-unverified audio tape. “The White House has expressed its desire to execute him,” bin Laden says. “When America makes this decision, it will have made a decision to execute whoever of you is held prisoner by us.”

A US counterterrorism official dismissed the announcement. “It's the height of absurdity for anyone associated with al-Qaeda to even suggest that now, at long last, they're going to start treating captives badly,” he tells Reuters. “They may have forgotten Danny Pearl and all the others they've slaughtered, but we haven't.”
(More Khalid Sheikh Mohammed stories.)

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