Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

As the President of the United States of America confirmed earlier today, the al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has been killed in a US air strike. The operation was carried out on Saturday in Kabul Afghanistan. No civilian casualties have been reported. Al-Zawahiri was indicted by the United States for the part he paid in the August 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, attacks which left 224 people dead and over 4½ thousand wounded. He has long been suspected of plotting the attack on USS Cole in 2000 in which 17 US sailors died and dozens more were injured. In 2001, conspiring with Osama bin-Laden, he coordinated the September 11 hijackings that levelled the World Trade Center and murdered nearly 3,000 innocent people, including Australians on American soil, in that day that will live in infamy. The world changed that day. So many lives have been lost, and so much blood has been spilled since, including all those Australians who served, sacrificed and gave their lives in Afghanistan.

For two decades this man fled the consequences of his crimes. Our thoughts today are with the loved ones of all of his victims. May they find some small solace in the knowledge that he cannot cause more grief through his acts of terror, and let terrorists see that Afghanistan will never ever be a safe haven for their hatred, their terrorism and their attacks on our humanity.

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