Osama issues fresh threat to US if 9/11 mastermind executed

DUBAI: World's most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden has warned that al-Qaida will kill American soldiers if the self-confessed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is executed.

"The day America will take such decision [to execute Khalid Mohamed and any others] it would have taken a decision to execute whoever we capture," Bin Laden said in the latest audio record, broadcast on Al-Jazeera.

He also said that US president Barack Obama was "following the footsteps of his predecessor", a reference to George Bush, the former US president.

"The politicians in the White House were practicing injustice against us and still they are. Especially by supporting Israel in its continuous occupation of Palestine.

"They used to think that America across the oceans is protected from the rage of the oppressed until our reaction was loudly heard at your home on the 9/11 with God's help," he said in the recording.

Osama's threat comes as Obama administration has announced it would try Khalid Mohammed and four other accused at a New York courthouse just steps from where the World Trade Centre once stood.

Sheikh Mohammed and the other accused are detained at Guantanamo as they await trial over the September 11, 2001 attacks that killed close to 3,000 people, most in New York.

Osama bin Laden's last audio recording was released on January 24, earlier this year in which he claimed responsibility for alleged attempted attack on an airliner on Christmas Day and vowed there would be further attacks on the US unless Obama took steps to resolves the Palestinian situation.