Ayman al-Zawahri, long the second in command of Al Qaeda, delivered his first public comments Wednesday on the killing of his boss Osama bin Laden in an American raid last month, saying in a video eulogy that Bin Laden had “terrified America in his life” and “will continue to terrify it after his death.”
The 28-minute video, titled “The Noble Knight Dismounted,” shows Mr. Zawahri dressed in white and seated with a rifle, according to the Site Intelligence Group, which tracks jihadist communications and translated the video.
In the video, Mr. Zawahri vows to continue Bin Laden’s efforts to “expel the invaders from Muslim lands” and called on Pakistanis to revolt against their leaders, “just as your brothers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria have done.”
Al Qaeda has been without a declared leader since May 1, when Navy Seals raided a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where Bin Laden had been hiding for years, and killed him.
While Mr. Zawahri would appear the likeliest successor to lead Al Qaeda, he is seen to lack Bin Laden’s charisma and ideological leadership ability, appearing to be more of a professorial scold than a leader likely to inspire new recruits.
In an English-language video message released last week, a Qaeda spokesman, Adam Gadahn, urged individual jihadists not to wait for instructions but to attack whenever and wherever they can. There has been no formal announcement about who would replace Bin Laden.
Mr. Zawahri, an Egyptian and former surgeon, is believed to be hiding in remote mountainous reaches of Pakistan — though that theory, which also had Bin Laden in such a location, was called into question after Bin Laden was found in Abbottabad, a middle-class town and home to a large Pakistani military base.
Wednesday’s video posting follows an audio recording that appeared online in late May, but was said to have been recorded before Bin Laden’s death. In the audio message, Mr. Zawahri addressed the revolutions and unrest spreading across the Middle East, throwing his support behind protesters in Syria and Libya while denouncing the NATO and United States, saying the Western powers had backed repressive regimes.
