Osama bin Laden

In a new audio recording, Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has threatened to kill captured Americans if 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is executed.

Al Jazeera broadcast the purported message from Bin Laden today. “The day America will take such decision [to execute Mohammed and any others] it would have taken a decision to execute whoever we capture,” the voice purporting to be Bin Laden says.

Sheikh and four other s allegedly involved in the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington are to be tried. The Obama administration initially said he would be tried in a civilian court but is now weighing the possibility of switching the trial to a military court. Sheikh has been held at the US prison facility at Guantanamo since his capture by Pakistani troops in 2003.

Bin Laden also said that President Barack Obama is “following in the footsteps of his predecessor,” Al Jazeera reports.

“The politicians in the White House were practicing injustice against us and still they are,” Bin Laden purportedly says in the recording, “Especially by supporting Israel in its continuous occupation of Palestine.”