Al Qaeda leader called on Barack Obama to save humanity from climate change, declassified documents show
Osama bin Laden was killed in a raid on his hideout in May 2011 by US special operatives (Flickr/ Day Donaldson)
By Alex Pashley
Osama bin Laden said America was better off waging a war on climate change than on Islam, according to documents made public on Tuesday.
The letter was included in materials seized in a US raid on his secret compound in Pakistan in May 2011, attributed to the Al Qaeda mastermind by intelligence officials.
“… the world should put its efforts into attempting to reduce the release of gases,” read the undated, unsigned letter to an aide, Reuters reported.
“This is a struggle between two of the largest cultures on Earth, and it is in the shadow of catastrophic climatic conditions,” he continued.
In a separate letter, he called on Americans to undertake a “great revolution for freedom” so that President Barack Obama could make a “rational decision to save humanity from the harmful gases that threaten its destiny.”
The letter was believed to be dated in 2009, shortly after Obama took office.
Bin Laden’s concern about global warming emerged as a theme in the first release of documents in May 2015, as well as an audio recording released via al Jazeera in January 2010.