Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said on Monday the United States had no right to kill Osama bin Laden but said this did not mean the Palestinian Islamist group supported al Qaeda’s attacks on civilians. Speaking on France 24 television, the Damascus-based Meshaal also said there should be more freedom in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad has deployed his armed forces to crush a seven-week-old revolt against his authoritarian rule.
“Concerning bin Laden everyone knows Hamas has differences from al Qaeda … especially (its) operations targeting civilians, but all this doesn’t give the U.S. the right to kill as they please without any regard for the law and to assassinate Arabs and Muslims, blaming everything on them and accusing them of terrorism,” Meshaal said in the France 24 interview.
During the height of a Palestinian uprising between 2000 and 2005, Hamas carried out dozens of suicide bombings in Israeli towns and it is classified by the United States and the European Union as a terrorist group. Questions about the bin Laden killing have multiplied since the White House said that he was unarmed when US commandos shot dead the al Qaeda leader on Monday in the walled villa where he had been hiding in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
