Pro-Osama marchers: US No. 1 terrorist – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos.

By DJ Yap
Philippine Daily Inquirer

MANILA, Philippines—Some 100 Muslims marched on Friday the US embassy in Manila to protest what they called the “desecration” of Osama bin Laden’s body, with one of their leaders tagging the United States as “the No. 1 terrorist in the world.”

Members of the group Maradeka and the Bangsamoro Supreme Council of the Ulama held the sympathy march condemning Bin Laden’s burial at sea. They said that while the leader of the terror group al-Qaida had been demonized by the US government, he still had the right to a decent burial as a mujahedeen or warrior of Islam.

But the protesters were stopped from reaching their destination by riot policemen.

Supt. James Afalla of the Manila Police District’s Sta. Cruz Station No. 3 had tried to dissuade the protesters from marching from the Golden Mosque in Quiapo toward the embassy. But the protesters, including teenagers and children, pushed on, shouting “Allahu Akbar (God is great)!” at intervals.

“To us, Bin Laden is a holy warrior… He is a Muslim. Thus, he is a brother to all Muslims. We do not believe what they are accusing him of,” Yassin Ebrahim, president of the Muslim Town Public Library, told the Inquirer.

Ebrahim said Bin Laden’s burial at sea—a move that, according to US officials, was intended to prevent his supporters from making his final resting place a shrine—was “a great disrespect.”

Bin Laden claimed responsibility for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States that killed more than 3,000 people. He was killed by US commandos in a raid on his hideout in northern Pakistan on Monday.

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