BIN LADEN FREE TO WAGE HOLY WAR BY SAYED SALAHUDDIN

Bin Laden free to wage holy war
By Sayed Salahuddin

Wednesday October 10, 05:24 AM

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's ruling Taliban say they have lifted all restrictions on the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, and he was free to wage a holy war against the United States.

"With the start of the American attacks, these restrictions are no longer in place," Taliban spokesman Abdul Hai Mutmaen told the BBC's Pashto service.

"Jihad is an obligation on all Muslims of the world," he said. "We want this, bin Laden wants this and America will face the unpleasant consequences of their attacks."

The United States claimed control of Afghan skies after a third night of attacks on Taliban targets.

Mutmaen said U.S. planes had launched a daylight raid on the Taliban's southern stronghold of Kandahar on Wednesday morning, but no harm had come to the leadership or bin Laden.

The hardline Taliban previously said bin Laden, living as their guest since 1996, was being kept isolated from normal means of communication and had no access to telephones, fax machines or the Internet.

Overnight, bin Laden's al Qaeda militant group said hijacked plane attacks on the United States would continue in a battle that would not end until the United States withdrew from Muslim lands.

The United States has named bin Laden as its prime suspect behind the September 11 hijack plane attacks that killed around 5,600 people in the United States and triggered Washington's war on terrorism.

The Taliban have refused to hand over bin Laden, saying they have no evidence he was involved and questioning how he could have planned such attacks while living isolated in Afghanistan.

Washington has already implicated bin Laden in a number of attacks on American interests, including 1998 bomb attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa and the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen last year.

But the bin Laden image has become a popular icon to radical Muslims, who see him as a fighter seeking to bring freedom to Palestine, Kashmir and other trouble spots in the Muslim world.

Portraits of bin Laden and banners reading "Osama is our hero" have been carried at anti-American demonstrations in Pakistan and other Muslim countries.

OBSCURE ACTIVITIES

Bin Laden's activities remain as obscure as everything else about the son of the multi-millionaire Saudi businessman, who began funding militant Islamic fighters during the U.S.-backed war to drive Soviet forces from Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Disinherited and stripped of Saudi citizenship, bin Laden's location in Afghanistan is a secret and he is thought to move around continually. His days of meeting Western reporters ended after the bombing of the U.S. embassies in East Africa.

Al Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman Bu Ghaith said in Tuesday's message carried on Qatar's al Jazeera satellite television that the group believed in "terrorism against oppressors".

"Americans should know... The storm of the (hijacked) planes will not stop," he said, referring to the suicide plane attacks on New York and Washington last month.

His statement fell short of admitting any al Qaeda involvement in the attacks but reiterated bin Laden's praise of the perpetrators in videotaped remarks released on Sunday.

He also suggested that Muslims should target U.S. interests across the world.