Al-Qaida: 'Our honour' to mount London bomb massacres

Al-Qaida deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri has claimed directly that his terror network was “honoured” to have carried out the London bombings which killed 52 innocent people.

The statement was the terror group’s first explicit claim of responsibility for the attacks – three on the Tube and one on a bus – in which the four bombers also died.

“The blessed London attack was one which al-Qaida was honoured to launch against the British Crusader’s arrogance and against the American Crusader aggression on the Islamic nation for 100 years,” al-Zawahri said in the tape aired on Qatar-based al-Jazeera TV and monitored in Cairo last night.

“In their final testament, the heroic brothers in the London attacks … provided great lessons to the Islamic nation and Muslims in Pakistan to oppose the infidels,” said al-Zawahri, who was shown in the tape wearing a white turban and speaking to someone who was interviewing him off camera.

In an earlier tape aired on September 2, al-Zawahri, who is thought to be hiding along the rugged Afghan-Pakistani border, issued a veiled claim of responsibility for the attacks.

Last night, Al-Zawahri, in bushy grey beard and wearing a black vest over a white shirt, said: “This blessed attack revealed the real hypocritical face of the West.”

The latest tape was apparently made recently as he referred several times to last Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Afghanistan, which he said were held “under the terror the lords of war” – an apparent reference to the country’s government.

Al-Zawahri also criticised the British government’s plans to deport firebrand cleric Abu Qatada and nine other Islamic extremists detained in Britain following the July 7 bomb massacres.

Spanish officials have described Abu Qatada as al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden’s “spiritual ambassador in Europe”.

In his tape, al-Zawahri claimed British authorities were planning to hand over Abu Qatada and nine others to their respective countries despite London’s belief “that they will be subjected to torture and possibly death if deported”.

The Egyptian-born al-Qaida deputy also denounced US demands for political reform around the world, including in Islamic countries, saying “there is no reform without jihad (holy war) for the sake of God and any call for reform without jihad will eventually be greeted by death and failure”.

He added: “Our enemies will not give us our rights without Jihad.

“The Americans will not allow any Islamic regime to take power in the heart of the Islamic world unless it is a regime collaborating with them like what happens in Iraq.”