Al Qaeda Threat To UK Over Rushdie
Al Qaeda's second-in-command has released a tape threatening Britain with retaliation for giving novelist Salman Rushdie a knighthood.
The audio tape features the voice of Ayman al Zawahiri, according to a US-based monitoring group.
Al Zawahiri's 20-minute speech was entitled Malicious Britain And Its Indian Slaves.
It was produced by as Sahab, the multimedia wing of al Qaeda, to be distributed to extremist websites, the US-based SITE intelligence group said.
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Osama bin Laden's deputy lashed out at Britain for having awarded a knighthood to Rushdie last month, saying it was defying the Islamic world by granting the honour to the author of The Satanic Verses.
The book sparked worldwide anger when it was published and led to Iran declaring a fatwa on the author and encouraging people to kill him on the grounds that he had offended Islam.
Al Zawahiri said that a "very precise response" was in preparation to retaliate against the award of the knighthood.
Addressing Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the Egyptian-born militant said Britain's strategy in the Middle East "has brought tragedy and defeat upon you, not only in Afghanistan and Iraq but also in the centre of London".
He then says: "And if you did not understand, listen: we are ready to repeat it for you."
It comes less than a week after Al Zawahiri's most recent video message was aired. In it he says that al Qaeda is targeting "corrupt" Muslim governments.
Al Zawahiri is thought to have been hiding in mountains on the Afghan-Pakistan border since the overthrow of al Qaeda's Taliban protectors in Afghanistan in 2001.
Al-Qaeda's No.2 Ayman al-Zawahiri warned in a 20-minute audiotaped message that the knighthood of Salman Rushdie was defying the Islamic world by granting the honour to the author of ''The Satanic Verses'', which was deemed an insult to Islam.

Al-Zawahri said in the message that a "very precise response" is in preparation to retaliate against this offence, "And if you did not understand, listen, we are ready to repeat it for you."

Rushdie was given the knighthood last month by Queen Elizabeth II. The United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office said the honor was not intended as an insult to Islam but was "a reflection of his contribution to literature."