Bin Laden Vows Never to Be Captured Alive

Osama bin Laden vowed never to be captured alive, in an audio message posted on a militant Islamist website yesterday.

"I have sworn to only live free. Even if I find bitter the taste of death, I don't want to die humiliated or deceived," the al-Qaida leader said, also accusing the US of "barbaric" tactics in Iraq similar to those used by Saddam Hussein.

The recording, 11 minutes 26 seconds long, appears to be the full version of a tape sent to al-Jazeera last month, breaking a year-long silence from Bin Laden. US officials declared the tape, only extracts of which were broadcast, to be authentic.

In the longer version that surfaced yesterday, Bin Laden mocked George Bush's "mission completed" declaration aboard an aircraft carrier in April 2003 when he said major conflict in Iraq had ended: "The Pentagon's figures indicate an increase in the number of your killed and injured in addition to the massive material losses, not to mention the collapse of troop morale and increase of the suicide rates."

Addressing the American people, the tape continues: "You can rescue whatever you can from this hell. The solution is in your hands, if their [the soldiers'] situation matters to you at all."

Comparing the American's behavior in Iraq to that of Saddam's, he said: "The jihad is ongoing, thank God, despite all the oppressive measures adopted by the US army and its agents [which has reached] a point where there is no difference between this criminality and Saddam's criminality ... And I say that, despite all the barbaric methods, they have not broken the fierceness of the resistance."