Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden urged European nations in a new audio tape aired today to withdraw their troops from Afghanistan.
"We are not demanding anything unjust. It is just for you to end injustice and withdraw your soldiers (from Afghanistan)," he said in the tape, released on the internet with a background picture of bin Laden and with German subtitles.
"An intelligent person does not waste his children and wealth for the sake of a gang in Washington," said bin Laden.
"It is shameful to be part of an alliance whose leader does not care about spilling the blood of human beings by bombing villages intentionally," he said, referring to civilian deaths in missile attacks against Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"If you had seen (the mass killings) of your American allies and their helpers in northern Afghanistan...then you would understand the bloody events in Madrid and London," bin Laden said, referring to attacks in the two cities in 2004 and 2005 respectively.
Germany, which holds elections over the weekend, has 4,200 troops serving with NATO-led forces in Afghanistan.
Two videos have been posted on the Web in the past week in which an al-Qaeda messenger, identified by the German Interior Ministry as German-Moroccan Bekkay Harrach, says Germany will pay a price if voters back a government that supports the deployment.
Bin Laden's last message was addressed to the American people and was posted a few days after the eighth anniversary of the September 11th, 2001, attacks.
Reuters