Deleted Osama bin Laden Letter Sparks Censorship Accusations

British newspaper The Guardian is facing accusations of censorship for deleting a decades-old Osama bin Laden letter from its website after it went viral on TikTok.

The two-page "Letter to America," which was published by The Guardian in 2002, features bin Laden explaining his reasoning for the 9/11 terror attacks, which killed almost 3,000 Americans in 2001. The al-Qaeda founder claimed that the attacks were orchestrated to make the U.S. "pay the price" for allegedly oppressing Palestinians by supporting Israel.

Amid the current and ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the letter has recently been viewed millions of times on TikTok. A number of young pro-Palestinian Americans described the letter as "mind-blowing" and a "revelation," with some even arguing that bin Laden's analysis of U.S.-Israeli relations "was right."

The Guardian removed the full text of the letter from its website shortly after it went viral, although it remained widely available online from other sources. The paper was soon denounced for the decision by an avalanche of critics on X, formerly Twitter.

"It's true, the Guardian really did remove the text of a Bin Laden letter from 2002 because it was going viral on TikTok," wrote journalist Michael Tracey. "Apparently censorship is preferable to letting the youngsters read notable historical texts (as if they're too dumb to find it elsewhere on the internet)"

"Ever since Oct. 7, we've been urging people to recall the lessons of 9/11: not just US's huge 'errors' responding but why it happened," journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote in response to Tracey's post. "Bin Laden's letter blaming US violence in their region - including US support for Israel - went viral on TikTok, so @guardian deleted it."

"I don't think that it's dangerous for people to read Bin Laden's letter to America," wrote @_Mama_Mia10. "I think it's dangerous to try and censor it. You don't have to agree with it or even believe what he said, but we have the right to know his motivations and investigate his claims for ourselves."

"Thousands of Americans were killed on 9/11 and the only way that we can prevent this from happening again is through knowledge and truth," @_Mama_Mia10 continued. "Killing innocent people is evil, but our government is also evil. Two things can be true at the same time."

"Biden Laden's 'Letter to America' has gone viral and the Guardian took it down as young Americans agreed with the terrorist leader," political scientist Glenn Diesen wrote. "It is a sign of our times that they decided to censor the letter rather than debating / presenting counterarguments."

"You know the PR war is going bad for Israel when they have to censor Osama Bin Laden because he's making too many good points against them," wrote podcaster Sean P. McCarthy.

A spokesperson for The Guardian sent Newsweek the following statement via email in response to a request for comment: "The transcript published on our website in 2002 has been widely shared on social media without the full context. Therefore we have decided to take it down and direct readers to the news article that originally contextualised it instead."

The page that previously featured the letter now notes that the document was deleted on Wednesday, without explaining the reasoning behind the decision. The updated page also includes a link to a contemporaneous article that includes some quotes from the letter.

When originally published, The Guardian called the letter "a chilling new message from Osama bin Laden" that had been circulated among Islamist extremists. In the letter, bin Laden warned: "Anyone who kills our civilians, then we are going to kill their civilians."

Bin Laden, who was killed by U.S. forces in 2011, argued that the murder of U.S. civilians was justified because they "cannot be innocent of all the crimes committed by the Americans and Jews against" Palestinians and Muslims, while asserting that "the creation and continuation of Israel" was "one of the greatest crimes."