Bin Laden letters published in Italy

Bin Laden: Our fighters must wait for the right moment

A series of letters apparently written by Osama Bin Laden in which he celebrates terrorism and condemns the United States has been made public in Italy for the first time.

The letters were seized three years ago by police in London as part of their investigations into the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

We call for the Muslim brothers to imitate Pakistan as to the possession of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons

Osama Bin Laden

In the letters Bin Laden congratulates Pakistan on its successful nuclear tests and calls on other Muslim nations to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

A magistrate in the north Italian city of Turin hearing the appeal case of a suspected Islamic extremist requested the documents from the UK police, putting them in the public domain.

Call to arms

"We congratulate the whole of the Islamic nation and Pakistan in particular because for the first time, Muslims have a nuclear weapon," writes Bin Laden in a letter dated from 29 May 1998.

"We call for the Muslim brothers to imitate Pakistan as to the possession of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons... It is the duty of Muslims to make themselves stronger in order to scare God's enemy," he adds in one of four letters published in the left-wing La Repubblica newspaper.

Our youths are different from your [US] soldiers: your problem is to convince your soldiers to fight while we must convince our youths to wait for their moment to fight

Osama Bin Laden

In another, earlier letter, he welcomes the inclusion of the Taleban regime in a US list of countries thought to support terrorism.

"My compliments to the Taleban Government," he writes, describing it as a "sign of good conduct".

He also calls for the expulsion of Americans from Saudi Arabia and says that he is working towards this aim from his base in Afghanistan.

"Our youths are different from your soldiers: your problem is to convince your soldiers to fight while we must convince our youths to wait for their moment to fight," he says.

Turin cell

The letters were part of a mass of documents handed to a Turin magistrate who is hearing the appeal of a man arrested and jailed as part of the Operation Challenge investigations into the Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam bombings.

The documents were handed over as part of investigations into the US embassy bombings

The man, Ibrahim Mamdouh Ellaban, was arrested along with another man in Turin after police discovered a garage packed with gold bars and weapons, including a machine-gun equipped with a silencer.

Turin has been identified by the Italian Interior Ministry as a seat of extremist activity, along with Milan, Bologna, Rome and Naples.

One of Turin's imams has publicly expressed support for Bin Laden and his call for jihad aginst the United States - a move condemned by the ministry.

"There are some spiritual leaders in some parts of the country who have made dangerous and unacceptable comments expressing sympathy with terrorism which the government cannot ignore," said Interior Minister Franco Frattini.

He said the government was using intelligence to confront threats and protect citizens.