EUobserver.com

In a new audio message released on the internet, Osama bin Laden has warned Europe that it faces a severe response for publishing images of the Prophet Mohammed.

The five-minute message addresses "the intelligent ones" of the European Union, telling the 27-nation bloc: "You went overboard in your unbelief and freed yourselves of the etiquettes of dispute and fighting and went to the extent of publishing these insulting drawings."

"If there is no check on your freedom of words, then let your hearts be open to the freedom of our actions."

"This is the greater and more serious tragedy, and reckoning for it will be more severe," he continued, according to a transcript by the SITE Intellgence Group, a American organisation that monitors messages from militant Islamist groups, cited by news agency AP.

"The response will be what you see and not what you hear and let our mothers bereave us if we do not make victorious our messenger of God," he continues.

The audio recording, posted on a website that has published communiques from al-Qaeda in the past, played atop a still photograph of Mr Bin Laden holding an AK-47 rifle and carried English subtitles. The message also bore the logo of the group's media wing, al-Sahab.

The extremist leader also addressed European nations' role in US attacks in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

"How it saddens us that you target our villages with your bombing: those modest mud villages which have collapsed onto our women and children. You do that intentionally, and I am witness to that," he said, according to the SITE transcript. "All of this (you do) without right and in conformity with your oppressive ally who — along with his aggressive policies — is about to depart the White House."

Nonetheless, although the release of the message coincides with the fifth anniversary of the launch of the US-led invasion of Iraq, Mr Bin Laden made no explicit mention of the conflict, but focused his ire on the Mohammed cartoons, and accused the Pope of complicity and launching a "new crusade" against Muslims.

"Your publications of these drawings - part of a new crusade in which the Pope of the Vatican had a significant role - is a confirmation from you that the war continues," he said.

Last month, Danish newspapers reprinted a cartoon orginally published in 2005 depicting Mohammed wearing a fizzing bomb for a turban.

Two years ago, cartoon images in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper visually depicted the Prophet Mohammed, an act forbidden by the Hadith – Muslim oral traditions – but not by the Koran. Some images were plain illustrations of the prophet, but one cartoon in particular had the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bomb for a turban, while others showed Muslims as scimitar-wielding killers.

Meanwhile, European countries are bracing for a new round of such protests as hard-right Dutch MP Geert Wilders is set to release a short film attacking the Koran.

Bin Laden warns 'intelligent ones' of Europe over Mohammed cartoons