http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-09-29T203420Z_01_N29203425_RTRUKOC_0_UK-SECURITY-IRAQ-QAEDA.xmlU.S. unable to confirm Muhajir in Qaeda Iraq audio
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
U.S. intelligence cannot confirm that al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Hamza al-Muhajir is the man whose voice appeared this week in an audio message urging the kidnapping of Westerners, officials said on Friday.
But a technical analysis of the Internet message shows the voice to belong to the same man identified as Muhajir in a September 7 audio recording from al Qaeda in Iraq, officials said.
"The voice matches the previous tape," said a counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter involves classified information.
...
The video, posted last Saturday, depicted a masked Muhajir reading a statement before the killing of a Turkish hostage.
http://www.kuna.net.kw/home/story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=909262U.S. confirms voice on audiotape is that of al-Qaeda leader in Iraq
WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 (KUNA) --
The intelligence community has reviewed a recent released audiotape and is confident that the voice on the tape is that of al-Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, White House spokesman Tony Snow said on Friday.
"The audiotape and the posting on a jihadist web site of a video allegedly showing Abu Hamza murdering a Turkish hostage in 2004 demonstrates the brutality and evil of Abu Hamza and his cadres," Snow said during a White House briefing. The call by Abu Hamza for scientists to come to Iraq to create biological and dirty bombs for use against U.S. bases "shows the grave danger these terrorists pose and continue to seek and will willingly use heinous weapons," Snow said. "We are not going to buckle to pressure from evil men who use kidnapping and other terrorist tactics to free other evil men like Omar Abdel Rahman," Snow said, referring to the blind Egyptian Muslim cleric who is serving a life sentence in the United States in connection with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. The demand by Abu Hamza that Iraqis repent and submit themselves to the terrorists "shows that for people like him, there is no peaceful coexistence with those who do not subscribe to their vision of the world, a vision darkened by fear, murder and hatred," Snow said. "And we stand by the Iraqi people who have rejected this message of violence and hate in favor of peace and freedom." Abu Hamza assumed the leadership of al-Qaeda in Iraq last June after U.S. bombers in Iraq killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former head of al Qaeda in Iraq.