Bin Laden Threatens France Over Burka Ban, War

An audiotape purportedly from terror master Osama bin Laden threatens France with a "strike by the neck" because of its burka ban and participation in the Afghan war. "If you want to tyrannize and think that it is your right to ban free women from wearing the burka, isn't it our right to expel your occupying forces, your men from our lands, by striking them by the neck?" the speaker demands in the tape released by Al Jazeera.

"The only way to safeguard your nation and maintain your security is to lift all your injustice and its extensions off our people, and most importantly to withdraw your forces from Bush's despicable war in Afghanistan," he adds. French security officials are taking the threat "very, very seriously," reports CNN. "The weaker we are, the more fragile we become, the more we will become hostages of these terrorists," said one lawmaker in a local radio interview.
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