The US will face worse attacks than 9-11 if it does not heed al-Qaeda demands, according to a new statement from Adam Gadahn, a California-born convert to Islam and the first US citizen to be charged with treason since the World War II era. The Internet statement directly addresses George Bush: "Your failure to meet our demands...means that you and your people will, Allah willing, experience things which will make you forget about the horrors of Sept. 11, Afghanistan and Iraq, and Virginia Tech."

Gadahn, wearing robes and a turban, is believed to be in Pakistan. "This is not a call for negotiations," he says in the statement. "We do not negotiate with baby killers and war criminals like you."

"You will go down in history not only as the president who embroiled his nation in a series of unwinnable and bloody conflicts in the Islamic world but as the president who set the United States up on its death march," the statement warns. "Pull every last one of your soldiers...out of every Muslim land. If so much as one single U.S. soldier or spy remain on Islamic soil it shall be considered sufficient justification for us to continue our defensive jihad against your nation and people."

Gadahn demanded the US end all support "moral, military, economic or otherwise to the bastard state of Israel and ban your citizens...from travelling to occupied Palestine or settling there."

The demands also include releasing all Muslim prisoners and ending support to the "apostate" governments of Muslim states. He said a US pullout from Iraq alone would not suffice. "Things are not going too well for your crusader coalition," Gadahn said. "We will continue to strike hard this year, next year, the year after that and so on until the last crusader goes home, whether waving a white flag or lying in a flag-covered casket."

Last year, an indictment delivered by a grand jury in a California federal court accused Gadahn of making a series of al-Qaeda propaganda videos. The treason charge against him carries a maximum punishment of death. The FBI has been seeking Gadahn since May 2004, and the US has offered up to $1 million in reward money for information leading to his arrest. Gadahn converted to Islam from a Jewish-Christian family when he was 17 and a few years later moved to Pakistan. Previously known as Adam Pearlman, he grew up on a goat ranch outside Los Angeles. (Reuters, May 29)

This guy is presumably the same as the supposed "Azzam the American," AKA Azzam al-Amriki.

See our last post on al-Qaeda.