(London) The British newspaper The Guardian removed a link to a letter attributed to Osama bin Laden, published in 2002, which claimed responsibility for the attacks of September 11, 2001, where he denounced American support for Israel and called for revenge on the Palestinian people, a text today widely used on social networks and taken out of context, in the middle of the Hamas-Israel war.
The document “was withdrawn” on Wednesday, the website of the Guardian in place of the text, which has become viral in recent days on social networks, often associated with favorable comments.
“This transcript posted on our website has been widely shared on social media without the full context. We therefore decided to remove it and instead redirect our readers to the article which originally contextualized it,” specifies the newspaper.
In this “Letter to America”, Osama bin Laden, killed in 2011 by an elite American unit in northern Pakistan, justified the September 11 attacks in the United States and threatened to attack again to Western interests.
This letter, which also calls for revenge on the Palestinian people, resurfaced in particular on TikTok, in the context of the conflict triggered on October 7 by the deadly attack by Hamas in Israel, which in retaliation promised to eradicate the Islamist group and is leading massive bombings in the Gaza Strip.
The origin of the resurgence of the letter was associated by several media with a video published Tuesday on TikTok by an influencer.