Al-Qaeda Chief Accuses US of "Plotting" Egypt Mursi Ouster
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri accused the US of "plotting" with the Egyptian military, secularists and Christians to overthrow Egypt's president Mohamed Mursi, in an audio recording posted on militant forums.
In his first public comment on the July 3 military overthrow of Islamist leader, the Al-Qaeda boss, himself an Egyptian, said: "Crusaders and secularists and the Americanised army have converged... with (Persian) Gulf money and American plotting to topple Mohamed Mursi's government."
In the 15-minute recording, Zawahiri also accused Egypt's Coptic Christian minority of supporting president's ouster to attain "a Coptic state stripped from Egypt's south."
Zawahiri attacked Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Laureate and former UN nuclear watchdog chief who was an opposition leader during Mursi's single year in office, AFP reported.
ElBaradei is the "envoy of American providence," Zawahiri said, labelling the former International Atomic Energy Agency chief as "the destroyer of Iraq."
Zawahiri, who belonged to the militant Egyptian Islamic Jihad group, is believed to be hiding somewhere in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
