Al-Qaeda No. 2 Mentions Al-Zarqawi's Death
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Saturday, June 24, 2006
CAIRO, June 23 -- Al-Qaeda's No. 2 leader paid tribute to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a video Friday, extolling him as "the prince of martyrs" despite the rocky relationship between the terrorist leader in Iraq and the al-Qaeda command.
The video by Ayman al-Zawahiri, aired on the al-Jazeera satellite television network, was the first acknowledgment by al-Qaeda's central leadership of the death of Zarqawi, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike northeast of Baghdad on June 7.
The clip showed Zawahiri, wearing a white robe and black turban, speaking to the camera with a picture of a smiling Zarqawi over his left shoulder. Zarqawi was "a soldier, a hero, an imam and the prince of martyrs," Zawahiri said, adding that his death "has defined the struggle between the crusaders and Islam in Iraq."
In addition to his customary attacks on the United States, Zawahiri vilified the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, as "an Afghani renegade who has abandoned his religion," and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, accusing him of betraying the Islamic principles of his Dawa party.
As leader of the group that came be known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, Zarqawi swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden, the network's overall leader, but his attacks on Iraqi Shiite Muslim mosques and civilians often caused tension between him and both bin Laden and Zawahiri.
