Bin Laden’s Letters: Washington’s Incredible Mistake Against France

In order to sway voters in favor of Obama as a candidate, one year after the victorious hunt-down of bin Laden, Obama’s administration has chosen to publish 65 letters from al-Qaida’s head terrorist. In doing so, they did not take into account the danger that one of the letter presents for the French hostages of Aqim, particularly in Nigeria, requesting a stay of their execution contingent on the result of the French presidential elections and the ousting of Sarkozy.

Among the letters of Osama bin Laden recovered from the May 2, 2011, raid when bin Laden was shot, the Obama administration has chosen this week to publish 65 of them, within the framework of a communications strategy intended in large part to associate this victory with Barack Obama’s candidature for re-election. While tens of thousands of documents were seized from the American invasion of Abbottabad, this small dose has necessarily been carefully measured, and this renders distressing, to say the least, the choice to publish a letter in which bin Laden advises the al-Qaida branch in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqim), with one crucial point: Wait for the results of the French elections before killing the hostages.

In this letter, bin Laden wrote not long before his death:

“As far as the French hostages with our brothers in the Islamic Maghreb, I want to warn that the atmosphere after the French standing towards the Libyan people does not condone killing the French, due to what will follow of negative reflections, after it became evident that most of the common people are supporting Sarkozy, so if we need to kill them then that should be after the end of Libyan events and their developments, and the better benefit as far as I see is to exchange the woman with the best that would benefit you and the brothers there, as far as the men, if the brothers can wait, then they should keep them until the elections, and if that is difficult then they should exchange half of them and keep the other half which should be the higher ranking and the more important ones, and if that also is difficult then they should at a minimum keep the most important man of them till the French elections, and it is better that the negotiations not be public and that they place a time limit on it so that the French do not postpone the exchange till the elections (TN: possibly after the elections) so that it’s a winning card in their hands, even though the remaining period to the election is not that short.” (http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/letters-from-abbottabad-bin-ladin-sidelined ) (Document “SOCOM-2012-0000010 Trans.pdf”)

Bin Laden then writes:

“Regarding the British officer captured by our brothers in Somalia, I say that we attempt to exchange him for our prisoners with them, or with their allies, so if this happens then it is what we want, and if they reach a road block and they cannot keep him as a pressure card on France to leave Afghanistan before Sarkozy elections, then he is to be ransomed with money, and they be made aware of what I said about the ramifications of killing the French in this stage, even though the reaction to killing would be less if the killing was from their side vs if it is from al-Qaida in Islamic Maghreb side.” (http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/letters-from-abbottabad-bin-ladin-sidelined ) (Document “SOCOM-2012-0000010 Trans.pdf”)

The question — a grave one — is therefore to know what might be the consequences of this publication by the American authorities on the release of the hostages detained by Aqim, in particular because of the explicit mention of the French presidential elections, where the name of Nicolas Sarkozy is not used at random; far from it.

It is at the very least a monumental error on the part of the Americans against French interests, on the eve of an election presented by bin Laden as a guillotine blade for the hostages.